Policies·sa_yemen_war_intervention_2015

Yemen war coalition intervention

SAU·2015 – present·enacted 2015-03-26·Al Saud monarchy; MoD under MBScandidate

movesspending level↑energy supply security↓

What the policy did

Launch of Operation Decisive Storm March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition military intervention against Houthi forces in Yemen following their seizure of Sanaa. Architected by then-Defence Minister MBS. Drove sustained defence-spending elevation (Saudi military spending peaked near 12-13% of GDP in 2015-2016), contributed to the fiscal deficit of 2015-2016, and locked in a long-run security burden. De-escalation UN-brokered truce from April 2022; Saudi-Houthi direct talks ongoing through 2023-2024.

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

↑

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

Defence spending elevated to ~12% GDP in 2015-2016, sustaining a high overall spending share.

unintended / side-effect

↓

energy supply security

regulatory.energy_supply_security

Policy posture toward energy supply security — domestic production capacity, import diversification, strategic reserves, nuclear stance, fossil-fuel mix discipline.

decreased · moderate · unintended

lower supply-security posture (single-supplier dependence, early phase-outs)

Houthi drone/missile strikes on Abqaiq 2019 demonstrated supply-security vulnerability from the war.

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?".

Large welfare states sustain long-run real GDP per capita growth when paired with market flexibility (low product- and labour-market barriers), trade openness, and fiscal discipline (debt-to-GDP below 90%), but not when paired with rigid product and labour markets, in an OECD and rich- country panel 1980-2020.

welfare_state_market_flexibility_complementinferred

viafiscal.spending_level

PARTIAL — coef=+3.308e-18, p=0.653; effect magnitude effectively zero

partial

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.

unfunded_fiscal_expansion_above_zlb_bond_market_responseinferred

viafiscal.spending_level

SUPPORTED — GBP/USD trough on 2022-09-26 (1.0703) was 5.02% below the 2022-09-22 pre-announcement close (1.1269); log-decline +0.0515 clears the 3.0% threshold …

supported

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 candidate channels attributes the majority of the divergence to regulatory-channel factors (Environmental Policy Stringency index increase post-2017, nuclear-phase-out schedule, single-supplier Russian gas dependency lock-in, industrial emission and reporting rules) rather than to fiscal-channel factors (general government consumption and tax burden were broadly stable across the Merkel late-term and Scholz years, with the debt brake in effect until 2023).

germany_decline_2018_2025_regulatory_not_fiscalinferred

viaregulatory.energy_supply_security

partial — DEU below synthetic by -0.251 cumulative over 2018-2022 (sign correct), but magnitude or placebo p=0.36363636363636365 below pre-registered thresholds…

partial

UK GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars) diverged negatively from a matched synthetic counterfactual of similar-income anglophone/developed economies (USA, CAN, AUS, NZL, DEU, NLD, CHE) starting around 2008 and widening post-2016 (Brexit referendum).

uk_economic_decline_multi_movementinferred

viafiscal.spending_levelregulatory.energy_supply_security

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'uk_post_2008' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

run pending

Fiscal multipliers are state-dependent: large at ZLB, small near full employment; no single-number answer is policy-relevant.

fiscal_multipliers_state_dependentinferred

viafiscal.spending_level

REFUTED — sign - OPPOSITE claim +, cumulative_effect=-1.569, h=5, p_h=0.0155

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

viafiscal.spending_level

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no outcome variable loaded; missing: ['derived: count of canonical_metrics with threshold met']

run pending

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.

uk_truss_mini_budget_currency_sovereign_mechanisminferred

viafiscal.spending_level

partial — Both mechanism legs are directionally consistent but at least one fails the SUPPORTED threshold: FX leg holds (5.02% trough decline); yield leg partia…

partial

Policy-driven nuclear phaseouts produce a three-order causal chain.

nuclear_phaseout_energy_cost_industry_exitinferred

viaregulatory.energy_supply_security

PARTIAL — mean_gap=+0.04357, |gap|/pre_sd=8.7, p_perm=0.25; claim direction ambiguous

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.

Operation Swords of Iron — economic dimension 2023–present

ISR·2023

match

1.6

spending levelenergy supply security

Sonangol oil enclave governance

AGO·1976

match

1.4

spending levelenergy supply security

Hydrocarbons nationalisation

DZA·1971