Yet another natural experiment

Yesterday night at 10.14pm an estimated 60 million Brazilians were plunged into darkness after a technical problem at the Itaipu dam. This blackout affected 18 states, with about 40% of Brazil's total energy cut off. I wonder if this is another natural experiment social scientists can exploit?

Remember the US-Canadian blackout in August 2003? Demographers claimed to have identified an increase in fertility rates, which (supposedly) translated into more babies after nine months. But even if we are sceptical about the underlying causality, is there anything we can learn from a (more or less) ceteris paribus drop of energy supply? At 10.14pm in the night, the effects on economy are probably relatively light compared to a daytime blackout.

Nonetheless, macroeconomic shocks can serve as quasi-experiments and provide useful information social scientists desperately need, particularly given the impossibility of conducting controlled (or randomized) macroeconomic experiments. For now, we will have to wait for the statisticians to process the data; time will tell.

GX.