The costs and benefits of leaving the EU: trade effects

Swati Dhingra, Hanwei Huang, Gianmarco Ottaviano, João Paulo Pessoa, Thomas Sampson and John van Reenen

Economic Policy, 2017, vol. 32, issue 92, 651-705

Abstract: SUMMARYSampson and John Van Reenen?>This paper estimates the welfare effects of Brexit in the medium to long run, focusing on trade and fiscal transfers. We use a standard quantitative general equilibrium trade model with many countries and sectors and trade in intermediates. We simulate a range of counterfactuals reflecting alternative options for European Union (EU)–United Kingdom (UK) relations following Brexit. Welfare losses for the average UK household are 1.3% if the UK remains in the EU’s Single Market like Norway (a ‘soft Brexit’). Losses rise to 2.7% if the UK trades with the EU under World Trade Organization rules (a ‘hard Brexit’). A reduced-form approach that captures the dynamic effects of Brexit on productivity more than triples these losses and implies a decline in average income per capita of between 6.3% and 9.4%, partly via falls in foreign investment. The negative effects of Brexit are widely shared across the entire income distribution and are unlikely to be offset from new trade deals.

Keywords: trade; Brexit; general equilibrium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F15 F17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (217)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Costs and Benefits of Leaving the EU: Trade Effects (2017)
Working Paper: The costs and benefits of leaving the EU: trade effects (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:ecpoli:v:32:y:2017:i:92:p:651-705.

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