The Natural Experiment Approach in Analysis of War Crowds vs. Agoral Gathering Impact on Macroeconomic Changes

Abstract

In this study natural experiment approach will be employed in an analysis of two social forces: war crowds vs. agoral gatherings and their impact on macroeconomic changes. The paper presents empirical and historical evidence that the European countries which reached their state independence as a result of agoral gatherings (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, East Germany, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Albania) obtained much higher indicators both in GDP and in GDP per capita in the decade 2009–2018 than the countries involved in the Yugoslavian war crowds (Croatia, Bosnia & Hercegovina, Serbia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Slovenia). For the purposes of our analysis, EUROSTAT data was used as containing macroeconomic indicators of the entire populations of the European countries, which are of interest to us in a distant perspective, at least eight years from the events that are the subject of our comparative analyses, as the primary independent variable. The results of a comparative analysis of these two indicators are presented and an attempt to interpret them is made from the point of view of behavioral economics. This interpretation takes into account the theories of crowd psychology and the theory of agoral gathering processes, as well as the psychosocial and economic importance of coupon privatization in the economic activation of citizens in the countries undergoing systemic transformation after the collapse of their totalitarian systems.