Policies·ph_debt_moratorium_1983

Philippines external debt moratorium (1983)

PHL·1983 – 1986·enacted 1983-10-17·KBL (Marcos)candidate

movesmonetary expansion direction↓trade openness↓

What the policy did

Central Bank of the Philippines declared a 90-day moratorium on external debt service payments 17 Oct 1983 following capital flight after the Aquino assassination (21 Aug 1983). External debt ~USD24.4bn. Rollover negotiations with IMF-chaired steering committee produced USD2.8bn new money and restructuring 1985. GDP contracted 7.0% 1984 and 6.8% 1985.

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

↓

monetary expansion direction

monetary.monetary_expansion_direction

Direction of monetary-base expansion decisions relative to trend. Separate from fiscal.transfer_expansion even when correlated.

decreased · strong

contractionary (balance sheet shrink, rates above Taylor)

Central bank tightened sharply; 39% peso devaluation Oct 1983 sought to stem reserves drain.

unintended / side-effect

↓

trade openness

regulatory.trade_openness

Trade policy openness — tariffs, non-tariff barriers, FTAs, industrial protection.

decreased · moderate · unintended

more protectionist

Import controls and forex restrictions re-imposed under crisis management.

Enacted by

philippines_marcos_crony_capitalism_1976_1986

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_openness

PARTIAL — recovery threshold pass=True (year_recovered=1998, 2007 vs 1991 = 70.53282727739165); Baltic−CIS gap pass=False (gap=5.1509956229348575)

partial

Across the 2008-2014 ZLB era and the 2020-2021 pandemic-response window, large-scale de-facto monetary finance of fiscal expansion in the US, Japan, and the Eurozone did not produce headline-CPI inflation consistent with naive quantity-theoretic monetisation predictions: cumulative central-bank balance-sheet expansion exceeded 15% of GDP while CPI YoY remained below 3% in each economy across both windows.

monetary_finance_zlb_no_inflationinferred

viamonetary.monetary_expansion_direction

REFUTED — CPI threshold breach: USA zlb_2008_2014 peak 3.81% in 2008; USA covid_2020_2021 peak 4.68% in 2021; Eurozone CPI not loaded

refuted

In a panel of advanced economies 1987-2007, base-money expansion and broad money growth correlate positively with asset-price indices (equity, real estate) but only weakly with headline CPI inflation.

austrian_monetary_expansion_asset_bubble_not_cpi_panelinferred

viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionregulatory.trade_openness

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — insufficient observations after listwise deletion (21)

run pending

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_openness

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'canada_post_1988' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

run pending

Singapore's long-run prosperity and frontier convergence are better predicted by extreme trade openness, strong rule of law, competitive product and services markets, and high economic freedom than by state ownership or industrial targeting alone.

singapore_state_capacity_market_openness_comboinferred

viaregulatory.trade_openness

PARTIAL — coef=-0.0001143, p=0.713 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive

partial

New Zealand’s 1984–1993 liberalisation (deregulation, tariff cuts, privatisation, inflation targeting, and fiscal consolidation) improved long-run macroeconomic stability and tradables-sector productivity over 1984–2024 relative to a synthetic counterfactual of OECD small open economies, but aggregate economy-wide labour productivity and TFP did not improve enough to support strong market-optimism claims.

new_zealand_reform_long_run_productivity_recheckinferred

viaregulatory.trade_opennessmonetary.monetary_expansion_direction

PARTIAL — mean_gap=-5017, |gap|/pre_sd=6.5, p_perm=0.692 (gap below 0.5×pre_sd or placebo p≥0.10)

partial

Post-2008 large-scale asset purchase programmes by the Federal Reserve, ECB, Bank of England, and Bank of Japan produced a measurable divergence between asset-price inflation (equities and residential real estate) and headline consumer-price inflation until roughly 2021.

qe_asset_inflation_vs_cpi_divergence_post_2008inferred

viamonetary.monetary_expansion_direction

refuted — Only 2 of 8 countries had even a 0.10 log-point asset-vs-CPI gap by 2020 (mean GAP_2020 = -0.02). The post-2008 divergence story does not survive a pa…

refuted

The ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA), with the goods agreement effective 2010-01-01 for the original ASEAN-6, raised ASEAN-6 merchandise-export intensity over the 2010-2019 window relative to non-ASEAN comparator economies.

trade_lib_acfta_asean_china_2010_export_growthinferred

viaregulatory.trade_openness

PARTIAL — ATT=+3.31, p=0.324, N=295, treated_countries=1 (above α=0.10)

partial

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.

Korea IMF programme conditions and implementation (1997-2000)

KOR·1997

match

1.4

trade opennessmonetary expansion direction

EGP second float and 600bp rate hike (March 2024)

EGY·2024

match

1.4

monetary expansion directiontrade openness

Birr float and FX regime liberalisation

ETH·2024