IESET.
Policies·ir_iran_iraq_war_economy_1980_1988

Iran-Iraq War economy 1980-1988

IRN·1980 1988·enacted 1980-09-22candidate
movestrade opennessspending levelproduct market competition

What the policy did

Eight-year war imposed full wartime command economy: rationing of basic goods via coupon system, FX rationing across multiple official rates, import licensing by sector, oil-export disruption and tanker war. Cumulative direct cost ~$1 trillion across both states. Imposed severe contraction but also consolidated clerical-revolutionary control and sidelined market-liberal factions.

Policy-content fingerprint — what this policy moved, on which axes

Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.

intended
trade openness
regulatory.trade_openness
Trade policy openness — tariffs, non-tariff barriers, FTAs, industrial protection.
decreased · strong
more protectionist
Wartime import licensing, FX rationing, export disruption.
spending level
fiscal.spending_level
General government spending as share of GDP, excluding transfers already captured under fiscal.transfer_expansion to avoid double-counting.
increased · strong
higher spending share
Wartime mobilisation spending despite oil revenue collapse.
product market competition
regulatory.product_market_competition
Product-market regulation, entry barriers, licensing burdens, network-industry regulation, price controls.
decreased · strong
more restrictive regulation, higher entry barriers
Coupon rationing, price controls, state allocation.

Enacted by

Empirical evidence — linked hypotheses

Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".

Estonia adopted among the most radical market-liberalisation packages of any post-Soviet state — flat tax (26% universal rate, 1994), currency board (EEK pegged to DM/EUR, 1992), rapid privatisation, unilateral free trade, and minimal capital controls — and by 2007 had recovered to Soviet-era GDP per capita levels and substantially exceeded them, while Belarusian and Ukrainian peers had not recovered comparably.
estonia_market_reform_post_soviet_growth_1991_2007inferred
viaregulatory.trade_opennessregulatory.product_market_competition
PARTIAL — recovery threshold pass=True (year_recovered=1998, 2007 vs 1991 = 70.53282727739165); Baltic−CIS gap pass=False (gap=5.1509956229348575)
partial
Across a broad panel of economies 1980-2020, market reforms (privatisation, trade liberalisation, and price decontrol) produce durable gains in real GDP per capita growth only when rule-of-law scores exceed a minimum threshold (WGI Rule of Law > -0.5, approximately the 40th percentile of the global distribution).
rule_of_law_market_reform_complementarityinferred
viaregulatory.product_market_competitionregulatory.trade_openness
REFUTED — coef=-0.1483 (sign opposite claim +), p=0.00481
refuted
The Soviet central-planning system, having already exhibited TFP stagnation 1970-1989, underwent a canonical institutional and economic collapse 1989-1998 as plan-enforcement was withdrawn without functioning market institutions in place.
soviet_union_central_planning_gdp_collapse_1989_1991inferred
viaregulatory.product_market_competitionfiscal.spending_level
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no outcome variable loaded; missing: ['derived: count of canonical_metrics with threshold met']
run pending
Rapid market liberalisation (price decontrol, mass privatisation, trade opening) under weak institutions produces large short-run welfare losses—rising mortality, falling life expectancy, rising inequality, and collapsing output—that may persist for at least a decade, compared to gradual reformers or non-reformers at similar initial income levels.
free_market_shock_therapy_social_costinferred
viaregulatory.product_market_competitionregulatory.trade_opennessfiscal.spending_level
PARTIAL — mean_gap=-3.156, |gap|/pre_sd=1.8, p_perm=0.367; claim direction ambiguous
partial
Canada’s long-run prosperity after the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement (1988) and NAFTA (1994) is more associated with market openness than with national industrial-policy initiatives.
canada_market_liberalisation_vs_state_industry_1988_2024inferred
viaregulatory.trade_opennessregulatory.product_market_competition
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'canada_post_1988' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects
run pending
Australia’s long expansion after the Hawke-Keating reforms (1983–1996) — including tariff cuts, financial deregulation, competition-policy introduction, and fiscal consolidation — is better predicted by market liberalisation than by sector-specific state direction.
australia_hawke_keating_reform_long_runinferred
viaregulatory.trade_opennessregulatory.product_market_competition
PARTIAL — coef=-0.03935, p=0.076 (above α=0.05); direction inconclusive
partial
From 2000 to 2023, Asian economies that continued market-oriented institutional reform from a low starting GDP-per-capita base — China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambodia — converged rapidly on Western income levels, with cumulative log GDP-per-capita-PPP growth materially greater than incumbent Western economies.
asian_convergence_vs_western_stagnation_2000_2023inferred
viaregulatory.product_market_competitionregulatory.trade_opennessfiscal.spending_level
PARTIAL — coef=+4.616e-17, p=0.912; effect magnitude effectively zero
partial
NZ Rogernomics 1984–1993 liberalisation (tariff removal, SOE corporatisation, financial-market liberalisation) produced productivity acceleration and real-income gains over 1990s–2000s relative to pre-reform trend.
nz_rogernomics_productivity_effectinferred
viaregulatory.trade_opennessregulatory.product_market_competition
refuted — NZ synthetic-control log-TFP gap mean over 1995-2005 = -3.80% (<= 0); informative log GDP-pc gap = -22.70%. Productivity acceleration claim not suppor…
refuted

Similar historical policies

Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.

References