Did mass privatisation really increase post-communist mortality?

In this document, we describe more fully the methods and results summarized in our letter to The Lancet. We begin by presenting our replication of the cross-country analysis reported in Stuckler, King, and McKee (henceforth SKM). We then proceed to an alternative research design, where we explore the relationship between privatisation and mortality across Russian regions. Finally, we revisit the question of whether privatisation increased mortality, the only mechanism for which SKM provide evidence by which privatisation might have increased mortality.