In the EU, inflation surged in the wake of the double-whammy of COVID and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The standard economic prescription for high levels of inflation is to raise interest rates, and that is what the ECB did. Inflation duly sank back again and the level is now hovering around the ECB's ideal of 2%.
I agree that this doesn't match the definition of a scientific experiment, in that there is no control group within the bloc to which the higher interest levels were not applied. Nonetheless, it seems to be a textbook example of an economy proving to be manipulable in exactly the way that economic theory suggests it will be.
I agree that in that case the economy ended up moving in the direction one would expect given the economic policy response taken, but without any way of ever being able to scientifically support causality we simply can't make the claim.
Its too easy with economics to look backwards and retroactively attribute what happened to a cause that would have made sense. It seems likely that Covid and the Russian war were causes of inflation, but we don't really know even that. For one thing, during the pandemic in the EU most stores and restaurants were closed. One could look at the economic relief (money printing) and expect inflation, but one could also look at the massive drop in spending and expect deflation instead. Had we seen deflation I fully expect today's economic analysis would be that lockdowns and business closures were clearly going to lead to deflation.
I agree that this doesn't match the definition of a scientific experiment, in that there is no control group within the bloc to which the higher interest levels were not applied. Nonetheless, it seems to be a textbook example of an economy proving to be manipulable in exactly the way that economic theory suggests it will be.