Derived from the steelman + listed predictions. These are the framework axes this school makes empirical claims about. Any hypothesis testing one of these axes is relevant evidence, whether or not the school explicitly cited that hypothesis ID.
General government spending as share of GDP, excluding transfers already captured under fiscal.transfer_expansion to avoid double-counting.
Product-market regulation, entry barriers, licensing burdens, network-industry regulation, price controls.
Trade policy openness — tariffs, non-tariff barriers, FTAs, industrial protection.
Rule of law as institutional substrate — contract enforcement, judicial independence, equal treatment before the law. Upstream of most other axes.
Security of private property rights — formal recognition, expropriation risk, titling systems.
De jure and de facto independence of the central bank from fiscal authority. Per D.1.5 scope, one of the framework's defensible monetary positions.
Direction of monetary-base expansion decisions relative to trend. Separate from fiscal.transfer_expansion even when correlated.
Ease of hiring/firing, collective-bargaining scope, minimum wage rigidity, temporary/permanent contract regulation.
Inflation is, over the medium run, a monetary phenomenon. Central banks that stabilise a rules-based nominal anchor — whether a constant money-supply growth rate (Friedman's k%), a Taylor-rule-consistent interest path, or a price-level target — produce fewer and shallower recessions than central banks operating with discretionary judgment. The Great Depression's severity was primarily a monetary-policy failure (Friedman-Schwartz), not a market failure. Rational-expectations critiques of systematic activist policy (Lucas critique) imply that demand-management fine-tuning is ineffective once private actors adapt. The policy implication is narrow: rules not discretion, clear nominal anchor, no fine-tuning.
Historical movements (parties, governments, doctrinal coalitions) whose programmes the framework codes as aligned with, opposed to, or partially aligned with this school's predictions. Alignment is scored by what the movement enacted on each axis, not by the labels it used.
M2 growth correlates with asset price inflation with a lag.
Volcker's 1979–1982 disinflation produced output recovery by 1984 once inflation expectations re-anchored, vindicating the monetarist claim that credible rule-based tightening imposes finite transition costs.
Countries that grant statutory central bank independence (Bundesbank, post-1997 Bank of England, post-1989 RBNZ) experience lower average inflation than peers that retain political monetary control, controlling for initial conditions.
Cross-country Phillips-curve data post-1970 shows no stable unemployment-inflation tradeoff in the long run, consistent with Friedman's natural-rate hypothesis.
The Fed's 1929–1933 contraction of M2 by approximately one-third was the proximate cause of the Great Depression's severity, not a Keynesian demand-collapse failure.
Post-2008 QE did not produce the CPI inflation monetarist quantity-theory would predict because the money-multiplier collapsed with banks parking reserves; base-money expansion was partially sterilised.
Pinochet-era Chile's monetary stabilisation (post-1975, advised by Chicago Boys) produced lower inflation and higher growth than contemporaneous Latin American countries using heterodox stabilisation.
Deregulation episodes (US transportation 1978–1980, UK telecoms 1984, NZ Rogernomics 1984–1993) show measurable TFP gains in the deregulated sectors within a decade.
Trade liberalisation episodes (China post-1978, India 1991, Mexico NAFTA 1994) are followed by per-capita output growth acceleration, not deceleration, in the liberalising economy.
US Reagan-era marginal-rate reductions (1981, 1986) produced measurable labour-supply response at the top of the distribution, as identified in the tax-reform literature.
Argentine output recovery post-Milei shock follows the Volcker-disinflation template: transition recession followed by recovery once inflation expectations re-anchor and the new nominal anchor is credible.
The v1 decomposition (three channels: WGI gov effectiveness, WGI rule of law, IMF debt/GDP) left 98% of the Nordic-vs-Southern-Europe log GDP/capita gap unexplained
El Salvador's ~98% homicide-rate decline from 103/100k (2015) to 2.4/100k (2023) — with the sharpest decline occurring after the Mar 2022 régimen de excepción and the Jan 2023 CECOT opening — is causally attributable ...
El Salvador's fiscal trajectory under Bukele (2019-2024) shows improvement in the primary balance and stabilisation (or modest decline) in debt-to-GDP after the 2020 COVID spike, achieved via a combination of: (a) the...
Large-scale universal or near-universal transfer programmes produce a three-order causal chain
supported·Hypothesis:universal_transfer_programmes_labour_force_participation_declineAcross the OECD 38, over 2000-latest, larger general government final consumption as a share of GDP is associated with slower growth in real household disposable income per capita, controlling for demographics, initia...
The natural-gas price shock that began in late 2021 and intensified after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 produced a measurable differential contraction of EU industrial output relative to US, UK, and...
Policy-driven nuclear phaseouts produce a three-order causal chain
German industrial gross value added, manufacturing output, and real household income diverged materially from a synthetic-Germany donor- pool counterfactual over 2018-2025, and a variance decomposition across candidat...
Precautionary-principle-based regulation in the EU produces a three-order causal chain relative to the US regulatory baseline
The EU Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals regulation (REACH, entered into force 2007 with phased registration deadlines 2010, 2013, 2018) imposed substantial fixed-cost registration r...
Binding statutory price controls produce a three-order causal chain
The EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) — reporting phase from October 2023, certificate-purchase phase from 2026 — raises the effective landed cost of EU-manufactured CBAM-covered products (steel, aluminium,...
Binding rent control initiates a three-order causal chain
Argentina has experienced 12 distinct episodes of annual inflation exceeding 50% since 1945, each preceded by a fiscal deficit exceeding 4% of GDP financed via central bank money creation
Monetary finance of fiscal deficits (central-bank balance-sheet expansion directed at sovereign obligations in the absence of independent policy rate adjustment) produces a three-order causal chain
Italy's real GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars) was approximately unchanged between 1999 (euro launch) and 2023 — a quarter-century of near-zero cumulative growth, with modest levels of variation aro...
El Salvador's FDI inflow, real-GDP growth, tourism arrivals, and business-formation rate accelerated under the Bukele era (2019-2024) relative to a Central American peer-country donor pool (Honduras, Guatemala, Nicara...
India's 1991 balance-of-payments-crisis-driven liberalisation programme (Manmohan Singh's package: rupee devaluation, industrial delicensing, trade liberalisation, FDI opening, partial financial- sector reform) produc...
Chile and Venezuela began the 1999-2023 window at broadly comparable GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars)
Canadian GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars) diverged negatively from a donor pool of resource-plus-advanced-anglophone-plus- small-open-developed economies (USA, AUS, NZL, GBR, NOR, CHE) starting aro...
Sectoral nationalisation produces a three-order causal chain
Spain's headline macroeconomic trajectory under the 2018-present PSOE-led governments is NOT uniformly worse than a peer euro-area donor pool, once euro-area-common shocks (COVID 2020-2021, 2022 energy shock, ECB rate...
China's 1978 Deng-era reforms — Household Responsibility System in agriculture, Special Economic Zones, dual-track price liberalisation, Township and Village Enterprise reform, gradual opening to FDI and trade — produ...
Under Financial Secretary John Cowperthwaite (1961–1971) and successors, Hong Kong pursued near-laissez-faire economic policy — no capital controls, no industrial policy, minimal tariffs, low flat taxes, and light lab...
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...
Developmentalist East Asian states (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China) pursuing active industrial policy — export-discipline, selective credit, state-directed FDI screening, targeted sector promotion — achieved hi...
El Salvador's homicide rate fell from 52 per 100,000 (2019) to 2.4 per 100,000 (2023) — a 95% reduction — under Bukele's Estado de Excepción security crackdown beginning March 2022
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 t...
Canadian real household disposable income per capita has stagnated or grown more slowly than in comparable resource-plus-anglophone-plus-small- open-developed economies (USA, AUS, NZL, GBR, NOR, CHE) over 2015-2023, o...
Strong employment-protection legislation (EPL) with high union wage-setting coverage and limited at-will dismissal produces a three-order causal chain in Southern European labour markets
Argentina's 2019 PASO shock generated an immediate official-FX break, reserve loss, and inflation pass-through; the 2020 base-money expansion was followed by a lagged inflation pickup by Q4.
Openness to trade and capital flows predicts Ireland's frontier convergence better than dirigiste industrial policy.
Openness to trade and foreign investment is a more reliable convergence engine than dirigiste industrial targeting.
Industrial policy (sectoral targeting, export subsidies, conditional credit, technology push) succeeds in raising long-run manufacturing productivity and export sophistication when implemented in high-governance state...
Sweden’s post-1992 crisis market reforms — fiscal consolidation, inflation- targeting adoption, tax and pension overhauls, and product-market deregulation — predict stronger real GDP-per-capita growth during 1995–2024...
Countries that undertake unilateral tariff liberalisation — defined as an autonomous, non-FTA-driven reduction in the applied weighted-mean tariff of at least 5 percentage points sustained for at least 5 consecutive y...
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 ...
Across a broad panel of economies 1980-2020, state allocation of resources — measured by government consumption share, state- enterprise share of output, and public-investment share — has negative long-run effects on ...
Labour-market flexibility (ease of hiring and firing, low EPL, decentralised wage bargaining) improves long-run employment rates, productivity growth, and GDP per capita only when paired with complementary adjustment ...
Higher government-consumption shares predict weaker TFP growth after controlling for public investment, education, and health spending, across a broad panel of advanced and emerging economies from 1970 to 2020.
Chile’s long-run income convergence is stronger after the combination of market reforms (1975–1990) and democratic institutional repair (1990 onward) than under the earlier state-led import-substitution regime (1950–1...
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 1984–20...
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 liberal...
Across countries 1990-2020, faster insolvency and bankruptcy resolution — measured by years to resolve, recovery rate, and strength of insolvency framework index — predicts stronger post- shock productivity recovery t...
Across emerging-market and developing economies 1990-2020, stronger contract enforcement — measured by years to resolve a commercial dispute, contract-enforcement index, and legal-origin dummies — predicts whether for...
Across an unbalanced panel of OECD and emerging-market economies 1980-2020, higher firm-entry rates (new business registrations per 1000 working-age population) predict stronger subsequent 20-year total-factor-product...
Across middle-income and catch-up economies 1980-2020, high state-directed allocation — measured by state-enterprise share of output, directed-credit intensity, and public-investment-driven growth — is associated with...
In Maddison long-run country panels, catch-up growth is materially faster below roughly 40 percent of US GDP per capita than above that threshold, but the post-threshold premium is small enough that the developmentali...
In a 1996-2018 Maddison/WGI cross-section, countries with stronger rule of law should show higher mean annual GDP-per-capita growth after controlling for initial income if the property-rights growth channel is strong ...
State capacity (proxied by government effectiveness, rule of law, and fiscal extraction) is a prerequisite for effective liberal market policy
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2023 country panel, higher inflation should be associated with lower investment shares through sound-money, calculation, and real-contracting channels.
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2023 country panel, higher inflation should be associated with slower real GDP per capita growth through sound-money, calculation, and real-contracting channels.
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2023 country panel, higher inflation should be associated with shallower private credit intermediation through sound-money, calculation, and real-contracting channels.
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2023 country panel, higher inflation should be associated with lower employment rates through sound-money, calculation, and real-contracting channels.
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2021 OECD/market-peer panel, stronger fiscal balances should be associated with higher private fixed-investment shares through crowding-out, risk-premium, and fiscal-expectations channels.
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2021 OECD/market-peer panel, stronger fiscal balances should be associated with higher domestic savings shares through crowding-out, risk-premium, and fiscal-expectations channels.
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2021 OECD/market-peer panel, stronger fiscal balances should be associated with faster real GDP per capita growth through crowding-out, risk-premium, and fiscal-expectations channels.
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2021 OECD/market-peer panel, stronger fiscal balances should be associated with deeper private credit intermediation through crowding-out, risk-premium, and fiscal-expectations channels.
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2021 OECD/market-peer panel, larger public-debt shares should be associated with lower private fixed-investment shares through debt-overhang, future-tax-expectation, and sovereign-risk channels.
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2021 OECD/market-peer panel, larger public-debt shares should be associated with lower domestic savings shares through debt-overhang, future-tax-expectation, and sovereign-risk channels.
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2021 OECD/market-peer panel, larger public-debt shares should be associated with slower real GDP per capita growth through debt-overhang, future-tax-expectation, and sovereign-risk channels.
Chicago monetarist theory predicts that, in a 1996-2021 OECD/market-peer panel, larger public-debt shares should be associated with shallower private credit intermediation through debt-overhang, future-tax-expectation, and sovereign-risk channels.
Chicago monetarism predicts this price system support claim should hold in the stated scope: Statutory price ceilings set below plausible market-clearing prices produce measurable shortage indicators — stockouts, queue formation, black-market emergence, quality degradation, and in monetary- expansion contexts, large divergences between official and parallel- market prices. The canonical cases examined are V...
Chicago monetarism predicts this fiscal rules support claim should hold in the stated scope: Countries that run procyclical fiscal policy during expansions — raising primary spending or cutting revenues when output is above potential — experience larger subsequent output volatility and deeper recessions during the following downturn, compared to countries that run countercyclical or neutral fiscal stance in...
Chicago monetarism predicts this fiscal rules support claim should hold in the stated scope: Credible fiscal consolidation episodes — defined as sustained primary balance improvement of at least 2% of GDP over 3 years, not reversed within 5 years, and accompanied by declining debt-to-GDP trajectories — predict stronger subsequent 10-year real GDP per capita growth and private investment than repeated discre...
Chicago monetarism predicts this fiscal rules support claim should hold in the stated scope: Germany's Schuldenbremse (constitutional debt brake, 2009) produced lower debt-to-GDP trajectories than comparable-economy fiscal-rule-absent peers over 2009–2019, without output loss relative to the Eurozone mean.
Chicago monetarism predicts this fiscal rules support claim should hold in the stated scope: Maastricht convergence criteria 1992 imposed fiscal discipline that produced lower inflation and interest-rate convergence in pre-accession EU members, consistent with the Ordoliberal principle of rules-binding monetary constitutions.
Chicago monetarism predicts this monetary expectations support claim should hold in the stated scope: Inflation expectations remained anchored through the 2008–2020 period in economies with credible inflation-targeting central banks, producing a flatter short-run Phillips curve than the 1970s relationship.
Chicago monetarism predicts this monetary indicator support claim should hold in the stated scope: US 10-year minus 2-year Treasury yield-curve inversions are followed by meaningful labour-market weakening in most completed post-1976 episodes. The pre-registered test treats a completed inversion episode as a monthly average 10y-2y spread below zero for at least two consecutive months, with new episodes allowed af...
Chicago monetarism predicts this bond market discipline support claim should hold in the stated scope: Truss 2022 mini-budget shows that unfunded fiscal expansion above the ZLB triggers sharp bond-market and currency responses through expected-inflation and risk-premium channels.
Chicago monetarism predicts this bond market discipline support claim should hold in the stated scope: UK Truss mini-budget 2022 gilt crisis reflected market confidence and institutional-framework rupture rather than an MMT-predicted hard fiscal limit, because the BoE restored order by intervening as issuer.
Chicago monetarism predicts this monetary rules support claim should hold in the stated scope: Pre-1914 classical-gold-standard episodes (excluding wartime suspensions) show lower long-run average inflation than comparable-length fiat-regime samples (post-1971) in the same or equivalent economies, even if short-run price-level volatility is higher under gold. The test compares long-horizon CPI geometric means...
Chicago monetarism treats this quantity theory challenge claim as conditional rather than dispositive: US Federal Reserve post-2008 QE expanded base money roughly 4x without triggering broad-money expansion or consumer-price inflation until 2021, contradicting the quantity-theory mechanical transmission.
Chicago monetarism treats this quantity theory challenge claim as conditional rather than dispositive: Currency monetisation does not mechanically produce proportional consumer-price inflation in high-slack regimes; the US 2008-2019 and Japan 1995-2020 experience demonstrates the decoupling.
Chicago monetarism treats this stabilization conditional claim as conditional rather than dispositive: Fiscal multipliers are state-dependent: large at ZLB, small near full employment; no single-number answer is policy-relevant.
Chicago monetarism predicts this monetary expectations support claim should hold in the stated scope: The Phillips curve flattened post-1990 in OECD economies, reflecting endogenous expectation formation and labour-market regime change rather than pure NAIRU drift.
Chicago monetarism predicts this monetary disinflation support claim should hold in the stated scope: Volcker disinflation 1979-1982 produced output costs (unemployment rising to 10.8%) that mainstream models systematically underestimated, consistent with post-Keynesian insistence that disinflation costs are real and persistent.
Chicago monetarism predicts this fiscal dominance support claim should hold in the stated scope: Argentinian chronic inflation reflects foreign-currency obligations (dollar-denominated debt, dollarised expectations) and repeated fiscal dominance in a non-sovereign currency, not a generic 'money printing' failure.
Chicago monetarism predicts this monetary rules support claim should hold in the stated scope: Argentine convertibility and subsequent collapse (Menem 1991–2001) reflects rule-based money's appeal combined with fixed-regime rigidity risk that Austrian theory predicts.
Chicago monetarism treats this fiscal.spending_level hypothesis as a conditional benchmark rather than a directional win condition: Conditional on latest real GDP per capita and broad Heritage region, countries with higher Heritage lower-tax-burden score in 2024 have higher latest-available account ownership. This tests whether the free-market/market-order association survives a first income-and-region robustness screen.
Chicago monetarism treats this institutional.rule_of_law hypothesis as a conditional benchmark rather than a directional win condition: Across a pre-registered panel of OECD and major emerging-market economies from 1996 to 2023, stronger rule-of-law institutions predict faster real GDP per capita growth after country and year fixed effects and basic macro controls. This tests the property-rights, contract-enforcement, and economic-calculation channe...
Chicago monetarism treats this regulatory.trade_openness hypothesis as a conditional benchmark rather than a directional win condition: The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), with trading formally commencing 2021-01-01, has not yet produced a measurable acceleration in aggregate African trade-openness ratios over the 2021-2024 window relative to a synthetic-control donor pool of non-AfCFTA emerging-market regions, because of slow tariff- ...
Chicago monetarism treats this monetary.central_bank_independence hypothesis as a conditional benchmark rather than a directional win condition: Liberal democracies experience monotonic positional drift toward larger, more redistributive states across multi-decade horizons. The mechanism is a set of asymmetric political-economy incentives — median-voter ageing tilts the franchise toward transfer recipients, the managerial / regulatory class expands its own s...
Chicago monetarism treats this regulatory.labour_market_flexibility hypothesis as a conditional benchmark rather than a directional win condition: The observed decline in the labour share of gross value added across OECD economies over 1980-2020 (typically 4-8 percentage points) is explained by a decomposable set of channels rather than a single cause: (a) capital-intensity technological change with capital and labour complementarity below unity (Karabarbounis...
Chicago monetarism treats this monetary.monetary_expansion_direction hypothesis as a conditional benchmark rather than a directional win condition: The 2021 expansion of the US Child Tax Credit under the American Rescue Plan (full refundability + monthly payments + raised maximum) reduced the official + Supplemental Poverty Measure child poverty rate by at least 3 percentage points within the six-month payment window (July- December 2021), with a sharp reversio...
Chicago monetarism treats this fiscal.spending_level hypothesis as a conditional benchmark rather than a directional win condition: Countries in the top quartile of Heritage lower-tax-burden score in 2024 have higher latest-available account ownership than bottom-quartile countries, consistent with free-market country policy regimes outperforming less market-oriented regimes on this outcome.
Chicago monetarism predicts this rule-and-price-system claim should hold: Countries maintaining long-lived food price controls or state procurement show slower agricultural value-added growth than market-priced peers.
Chicago monetarism predicts this rule-and-price-system claim should hold: High public-debt overhang — defined as general government gross debt exceeding 90% of GDP for at least 5 consecutive years — predicts lower private gross fixed capital formation and slower real GDP per capita growth over subsequent 30-year windows, in a broad-country panel 1970-2020. The directional claim is that debt-overhang episodes are followed by cumulative private-investment shortfalls of 10-25% relative to matched non-overhang peers, and by annual growth shortfalls of 0.3-0.7 percentage points, controlling for initial income, institutions, and crisis history.
Chicago monetarism predicts this rule-and-price-system claim should hold: Higher broad economic freedom predicts faster real GDP per-capita growth.
Chicago monetarism predicts this monetary-order claim should hold: Sound-money institutions predict lower inflation.
Chicago monetarism predicts this nominal-real split claim should hold: a credible monetary-policy regime shift can improve inflation and labour-market outcomes without necessarily delivering a large long-run real-growth acceleration.
Chicago monetarism predicts this long-run fiat-money claim should hold: post-1971 fiat currencies lose purchasing power against hard-asset benchmarks over multi-decade horizons.
Chicago monetarism predicts this India trade-liberalisation claim should hold: the 1991 tariff-cut reform should produce a visible structural increase in trade openness.
Chicago monetarism predicts this Chile open-regionalism claim should hold: the bilateral FTA cascade should raise trade openness by more than Latin American comparators.
Chicago monetarism predicts this Indonesia unilateral-liberalisation claim should hold: the 1985-1995 reform wave should produce a clear pre-crisis trade-openness break.
Chicago monetarism predicts this Mexico-EU FTA claim should hold: the 2000 agreement should produce a detectable trade-openness gain relative to Latin American comparators.
Chicago monetarism predicts this youth labour-market claim should hold: higher minimum-wage bite ratios should be associated with higher youth unemployment in broad panels.
Chicago monetarism predicts this central-bank-institution claim should hold: operational monetary-policy independence and a rule-bound macroprudential remit should reduce realised inflation volatility and credit-cycle amplitude.
Chicago monetarism predicts this Bangladesh market-access claim should hold: expanded external market access should translate into measurable export-led manufacturing gains when price signals and global demand are allowed to operate.
Chicago monetarism predicts this regional-bloc industrialisation claim should hold in the negative direction: Mercosur membership should not be expected to create durable Argentine industrial deepening without wider macro stability and market discipline.
Chicago monetarism predicts this capital-gains-tax claim should hold: lowering the tax wedge on capital gains should raise investment incentives and business formation in OECD panels after controls.
Public electrification complements private-sector growth when regulatory quality is high; in low-regulatory-quality states, electricity access expansions show weaker links to manufacturing value added and business entry.
Energy-shock relief works better as targeted transfers or temporary tax smoothing in high-capacity states; administered price controls/subsidies predict shortages, fiscal slippage, or lower investment where pass-throu...
Green industrial policy complements markets when it lowers renewable costs or deployment without raising industrial electricity prices; where grid integration capacity is weak, higher renewable shares predict manufact...
Higher industrial electricity prices predict lower manufacturing value-added share and weaker industrial production growth.
Agricultural output growth achieved through forest-cover loss has weaker poverty-reduction returns and worse emissions outcomes than output growth without forest loss.
Fossil-fuel subsidy reductions lower emissions intensity only when paired with household compensation; otherwise they raise poverty or energy stress enough to weaken the just-transition claim.
In high-income countries, material footprint per capita can fall while life expectancy and life satisfaction are maintained or improved; refuted if footprint reductions systematically require welfare losses outside re...
carbon pricing achieves emissions reductions at lower output and household-cost penalties per ton abated than technology-specific mandates of similar ambition.
sustained household fuel or electricity price controls predict higher shortage frequency, larger fiscal subsidy burdens, and lower energy-sector investment.
fuel-subsidy reforms paired with targeted transfers produce stronger 5- to 15-year fiscal balances and social spending durability than unreformed universal subsidies.
network-sector unbundling combined with independent regulation predicts lower prices and better service quality than vertically integrated state or protected monopoly models.
Higher nuclear electricity share predicts lower industrial power-price volatility and lower fossil electricity share.
Higher fossil-fuel consumption subsidies predict higher energy intensity and slower renewable-share growth.
Expanding protected land lowers land-use emissions or forest loss without reducing food production per capita in countries with adequate yield growth.
Public investment crowds in renewable capacity and private investment during slack periods, but is refuted if higher public investment systematically displaces private capital without capacity gains.
Renewable-capacity growth increases net employment or prevents industrial-employment loss in regions with transition policy, while the claim is refuted if capacity growth coincides with persistent employment losses.
Rapid renewable electricity-share growth raises electricity prices in the short run unless fossil or nuclear backup volatility falls.
Lower annual hours worked reduce energy use and emissions per capita without proportionate reductions in life satisfaction or employment.
Fiscal consolidation within three years after recessions lowers employment and potential-output paths relative to countries that delay consolidation until recovery.
Larger automatic stabilizers reduce peak-to-trough GDP losses and poverty spikes during recessions, but may trade off against recovery speed if labor-market reentry is weak.
Public investment raises infrastructure and growth outcomes only where corruption control is high; where corruption control is low, higher public investment predicts debt accumulation without road, electricity, or gro...
Education spending raises human capital and later productivity only where governance quality and teacher/system capacity are high; spending alone is weakly related to outcomes in low-capacity systems.
Discretionary fiscal expansion raises real output with limited inflation when unemployment is above its country-specific 10-year mean, but the output gain shrinks and inflation pass-through rises when unemployment is ...
During the 2008-2012 crisis, faster fiscal stimulus in high-capacity states predicted smaller employment losses and faster GDP recovery; in low-capacity/high-debt states, stimulus size had weaker recovery payoff and w...
Government size only drags growth when the marginal increase is government consumption or wage-bill heavy; public investment-heavy expansions in high-capacity states have neutral or positive five-year productivity eff...
Government spending has a nonmonotonic relationship with growth: moderate-to-large spending is compatible with growth in high-effectiveness states, while similarly large spending in low-effectiveness states predicts l...
Public health spending reduces mortality and raises life expectancy when corruption control is high; low corruption-control states show weaker health outcome gains per spending point.
Industrial-policy intensity proxies such as R&D spending or high-tech export targeting predict durable high-tech export shares only above a government-effectiveness threshold; below it, the same policy intensity predi...
Public investment complements private investment and productivity only in high-execution states; in low government-effectiveness states, higher public capital formation predicts weaker private investment shares and no...
R&D spending converts into patenting and productivity only when private finance and regulatory quality are adequate; otherwise R&D intensity is weakly associated with innovation outcomes.
In OECD recessions from 1980-2024, larger automatic stabilizers cushion two-year GDP and employment losses only where government effectiveness is above the sample median; where effectiveness is low, the same spending ...
Social spending reduces poverty more strongly when tax administration and corruption control are high; in weak-capacity states, spending growth has lower poverty elasticity and higher fiscal slippage.
Higher tax revenue supports growth and poverty reduction when tax collection capacity and rule of law are high; above similar revenue shares in low-capacity states, marginal revenue predicts lower private investment a...
Lower out-of-pocket health-spending shares predict lower avoidable mortality and less medical impoverishment after total health spending is controlled; refuted if decommodification has no independent outcome gain.
Government deficits are associated with higher private-sector net saving, especially when current-account balances are stable; the claim is refuted if private saving does not co-move after accounting identities and va...
Public education spending reduces inequality or improves intergenerational mobility only when housing-cost burden is low.
Higher public education spending predicts higher secondary and tertiary attainment among lower-income cohorts and lower intergenerational earnings persistence; a null or regressive attainment effect would refute the e...
Higher interest expenditure shares predict lower public investment or education/health spending in EU country-years outside monetary-sovereign conditions.
Fiscal tightening predicts weaker next-year GDP growth when real interest rates are low or output gaps are negative, but not when inflation is high.
Fiscal expansions during high-slack years reduce unemployment and accelerate GDP recovery more than expansions near capacity, with no persistent inflation overshoot unless supply constraints bind.
R&D spending has larger high-tech export returns in countries with higher government effectiveness and rule of law.
Higher government consumption share predicts lower private investment share, especially when debt-service burden is high.
Higher health-spending shares improve mortality outcomes without reducing medium-run GDP-per-capita growth unless financed through high debt-service burdens.
higher central-bank independence predicts lower inflation volatility and stronger real wage growth over 15- to 30-year windows after controlling for fiscal dominance.
revenue-neutral tax shifts from income taxation toward broad consumption taxation predict higher household saving and private investment, without systematically weaker lower-decile consumption growth when transfers ar...
lower effective marginal tax rates on new investment predict faster capital deepening and manufacturing productivity growth than sector-specific investment credits.
expenditure rules that cap current spending while preserving public investment predict higher private investment and lower fiscal volatility than untargeted deficit rules.
binding fiscal rules with transparent escape clauses predict lower debt-service burdens and faster post-shock recovery than discretionary fiscal regimes at similar initial debt levels.
countries that shift toward broader tax bases and lower statutory marginal rates achieve higher 10- to 25-year private investment growth without lower total revenue ratios than comparable countries relying on narrow b...
Higher public education spending as a share of GDP predicts later human-capital gains only where governance quality is above the sample median.
Higher housing-cost burdens are associated with higher after-tax inequality even after market-income inequality is controlled.
Social spending reduces poverty more effectively when active labour programmes and family benefits make up a larger spending share.
Increases in top marginal income-tax rates lower top-income concentration without reducing medium-run GDP per capita growth or private investment more than matched lower-tax countries.
Higher public health spending reduces amenable mortality, infant mortality, and out-of-pocket burden after income and population-age controls; the claim is refuted if spending growth does not improve outcomes or only ...
Countries with higher pre-2020 public health spending shares had smaller 2019-2022 life-expectancy losses, conditional on age structure and income.
More generous public pensions lower elderly poverty and material deprivation, and the claim is weakened if gains are accompanied by persistent working-age tax wedges, debt-service stress, or lower employment.
Larger tax-and-transfer redistribution gaps predict faster bottom-40 real disposable-income growth over the next three years without a GDP-per-capita growth penalty larger than 0.3 percentage points per year.
R&D spending intensity predicts higher patent intensity only where government effectiveness or rule of law is high.
Higher social spending reduces market-income poverty more strongly where benefits are more cash-and-service universal, and the claim is weakened if poverty falls only through accounting transfers with no improvement i...
Higher tax revenue predicts faster growth only when it is associated with higher public investment or government effectiveness.
Health expenditure per capita increases life expectancy strongly at low and middle spending levels but has sharply diminishing returns above the OECD median.
Higher out-of-pocket health spending shares predict higher infant, under-5, or amenable mortality at a given income level.
Growth in food or crop production per rural worker predicts lower poverty rates and child mortality in low- and middle-income countries.
Declines in agricultural employment share predict faster GDP-per-capita growth only when manufacturing or services productivity rises at the same time.
Broadband infrastructure improves business entry, productivity, and export services when telecom competition and regulatory quality are high; monopoly rollout without competition shows weaker diffusion benefits.
Transport infrastructure raises regional productivity and employment where procurement quality and maintenance capacity are high; low-capacity buildouts show weaker productivity gains and higher debt per road-km impro...
More restrictive capital-account regimes reduce crisis incidence and exchange-rate volatility without lowering long-run investment or GDP growth in emerging markets.
deeper private capital markets predict faster reallocation of capital toward high-productivity firms and stronger aggregate TFP growth than bank-dominated systems with politically concentrated credit.
directed-credit intensity predicts lower marginal product of capital and slower total factor productivity growth than market-priced credit allocation.
moderate-to-strong IP protection predicts higher quality-adjusted innovation and technology diffusion, but extremely restrictive follow-on rules reduce downstream innovation.
stable rule-bound regulation predicts higher private investment and lower investment volatility than discretionary licensing or case-by-case industrial policy.
Higher ICT-sector value-added or productivity growth predicts faster aggregate GDP-per-hour growth.
Human-capital growth predicts TFP growth more strongly than capital-deepening alone over 5-year windows.
Growth in resident patent applications predicts TFP growth over the next 3-5 years more strongly than non-resident patenting.
Universal or broad health coverage improves health outcomes without reducing employment when financed through broad-based taxes or social insurance and managed by high-capacity institutions; payroll-heavy financing wi...
Urban infrastructure investment lowers mortality and supports urban productivity only when municipal/state capacity is high; rapid urbanization without service delivery predicts worse health and weaker productivity.
Energy use per capita has a strong positive association with life expectancy below a threshold but little additional association above high-income levels.
countries implementing durable packages of trade openness, monetary stability, property-rights improvement, and entry liberalization show stronger 15- to 30-year gains in median consumption, life expectancy, and human...
Higher physician density predicts lower amenable mortality, with larger effects where public coverage or public health spending is higher.
Credit-gap booms combined with house-price booms predict higher unemployment 2-4 years later.
Real residential property-price growth above income growth predicts weaker private consumption growth over the next 2 years.
Credit booms turn into damaging house-price cycles primarily where housing supply and permitting capacity are constrained; elastic-supply markets show smaller price booms and smaller post-boom employment losses.
EU countries with faster construction value-added or construction employment growth experience lower subsequent housing-cost overburden.
OECD country-years with higher housing-cost overburden rates have lower real private-consumption-per-capita growth over the next 1-3 years, after income, unemployment, and country/year effects.
Rising low-income rent burden predicts higher child poverty or disposable-income poverty, net of unemployment and GDP per capita.
Capital-market depth raises patenting and high-growth entry when rule of law and disclosure quality are high; in weak-institution settings, market depth predicts volatility and crisis exposure more than innovation.
Regulation complements markets when regulatory quality is high: higher regulatory quality predicts more business entry and less informality; high procedural burden with low regulatory quality predicts lower entry and ...
faster and more predictable contract enforcement predicts larger average firm scale, lower working-capital constraints, and higher labor productivity.
higher formal business-entry barriers predict larger informal sectors and lower small-firm productivity growth over long windows.
improvements in expropriation-risk and property-rights indicators predict higher private investment and longer project maturities, especially in capital-intensive sectors.
Higher collective-bargaining coverage lowers in-work poverty and low-wage incidence with no youth-employment penalty in coordinated systems, but is refuted if coverage mainly prices out young or low-skill workers.
Active labour-market spending reduces long-term unemployment only where case-management capacity and benefit conditionality are strong; passive benefit generosity without activation predicts longer unemployment duration.
Public childcare and family benefits raise female labour-force participation and fertility only when housing costs and childcare supply constraints are not binding; high transfers without supply expansion have weaker ...
In-work benefits increase low-income employment when phaseout cliffs are smooth and administration is simple; sharp cliffs or complex means tests predict lower hours growth and weaker reemployment.
More generous unemployment benefits do not lower employment when activation spending and case-management capacity are high; without activation, generosity predicts longer unemployment duration and lower employment rates.
Childcare and family-benefit expansions raise female labor-force participation and fertility without lowering maternal employment; refuted if cash-only benefits reduce employment or fail to move fertility.
Employment protection improves job security and tenure without creating youth/temporary-contract dualism only when active labor policy and growth are strong.
Higher private-credit depth and financial-sector value-added shares predict lower labor shares and weaker real investment after credit booms, supporting financialization critiques if robust.
Faster services-sector expansion predicts higher female labour-force participation, net of education and income.
Public employment or activation-heavy labor-market programs lower long-term unemployment and poverty more than passive transfers at similar fiscal cost.
In demand-constrained high-income economies, rising labor share predicts stronger consumption and GDP growth, while profit-share gains predict weaker domestic demand.
Moderate minimum-wage bite increases low-end wages and reduces working poverty with employment effects near zero; refuted if high-bite settings show significant low-skill job losses.
stricter employment protection legislation predicts higher youth unemployment and longer unemployment duration after demand shocks, with smaller effects where apprenticeships and temporary contracts are flexible.
high minimum-wage bite raises wages for covered incumbents but predicts weaker youth employment and higher informal employment in low-productivity regions.
lower entry barriers in childcare, retail, transport, and personal services predict higher female labor-force participation through lower household-service prices and more flexible jobs.
higher labor tax wedges predict lower prime-age employment and higher informality over long windows, with larger effects in middle-income economies.
Active labour-market spending predicts faster unemployment declines after unemployment shocks than passive cash-support spending.
Stricter employment protection legislation predicts higher youth unemployment, especially when GDP growth is weak.
Higher minimum-wage bite predicts higher low-education unemployment when productivity growth is below the OECD median.
Higher union density lowers wage dispersion but may reduce employment only where productivity growth is weak.
Larger vocational or work-based upper-secondary pathways predict lower youth unemployment without reducing tertiary progression.
Monetary tightening reduces labor share and wage growth more than profit income during disinflation episodes, implying a distributional cost channel.
Reductions in annual hours worked raise hourly productivity and wellbeing without lowering employment rates when implemented in high-productivity economies.
More generous unemployment benefits reduce household-income losses and recession depth, but the strongest claim is refuted if they materially lengthen unemployment duration after controlling for labor-demand shocks an...
Higher union density raises labor share and lowers disposable-income inequality without reducing medium-run GDP per hour growth once sector composition is controlled.
Higher household debt-service ratios predict slower real private-consumption growth especially after policy-rate increases.
Periods of policy rates below inflation/GDP-growth fundamentals predict later credit-gap and house-price expansions.
Higher pre-crisis bank capital buffers reduce crisis output losses without permanently lowering credit growth in high-supervision states; in weak-supervision states, nominal capital ratios do not prevent credit busts.
Financial depth supports productivity and innovation only under strong rule of law; in weak-rule-of-law settings, private credit growth predicts credit booms and asset prices more than TFP or patenting.
Large central-bank government-bond purchases lower long yields without producing proportional CPI inflation when unemployment is above pre-crisis levels.
US M2 or central-bank balance-sheet expansions predict asset-price inflation more strongly than CPI inflation over post-1990 windows.
credit booms occurring under subsidized or politically directed credit regimes produce deeper post-boom output losses than credit booms under market-priced credit.
negative real deposit rates created by interest-rate caps or high inflation reduce private saving and lower long-run domestic investment quality.
sustained excess broad-money growth over real output growth predicts higher medium-run inflation across regimes, with weaker coefficients only where credible nominal anchors are present.
For monetary sovereigns with floating exchange rates and debt in domestic currency, high public-debt ratios do not predict inflation or default absent real-resource or external-balance stress.
Real effective exchange-rate appreciation predicts lower export product variety and weaker goods-export growth over the next 2 years.
Infant-industry protection works when tariffs are temporary and followed by export-share gains; persistent tariffs without export discipline predict lower consumption growth and no high-tech export upgrading.
Tariff reductions increase consumption and export variety in high-rule-of-law and high-human-capital countries, but generate weak or negative medium-run growth in low-capacity countries with shallow finance.
Countries with both higher domestic food-production growth and higher food-trade openness have smaller food-price and poverty spikes after global commodity-price shocks.
High-tech export shares generate stronger GDP and TFP growth when export concentration is low.
Mission-oriented industrial policy raises high-tech export shares and resident patenting after five to ten years, with support only if gains exceed general R&D and education trends.
customs simplification and shorter border delays predict lower trade costs and faster small-exporter growth than tariff cuts alone.
tighter FDI restrictions predict slower adoption of foreign technology and weaker productivity convergence in tradable sectors.
durable tariff reductions predict lower tradable-goods prices and higher real household consumption, especially for lower-income households with high tradable basket shares.
Higher trade openness raises short-run unemployment volatility but lowers average unemployment in flexible or high-capacity labour markets.
Tertiary attainment growth predicts higher high-tech export shares after 3-5 years, conditional on income and trade openness.
More diversified export baskets predict smaller export and GDP contractions during global downturns.
Higher food import tariffs predict higher food-price inflation and worse poverty outcomes, especially in food-import-dependent countries.
Tariff reductions predict greater import product variety and higher private consumption per capita over 3-year windows.
Higher tariff protection does not predict later high-tech export upgrading unless governance quality is high.
Output or energy-use contractions do not have to reduce basic-needs outcomes when health, education, and food-security institutions are protected; refuted if contractions reliably worsen mortality, schooling, or pover...
Ranked by axis-overlap score. These are hypotheses already in the library whose tests speak to the axes this school's predictions live on, regardless of whether the school explicitly cited them.
These are claims explicitly excluded from testing (contested in mainstream literature or beyond what available data can identify). Excluding them sharpens what remains.