International trade barriers and regional employment: the case of a no-deal Brexit

Hans-Ulrich Brautzsch and Oliver Holtemöller

Journal of Economic Structures, 2021, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-25

Abstract: Abstract We use the World Input–Output Database (WIOD) combined with regional sectoral employment data to estimate the potential regional employment effects of international trade barriers. We study the case of a no-deal Brexit in which imports to the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) would be subject to tariffs and non-tariff trade costs. First, we derive the decline in UK final goods imports from the EU from industry-specific international trade elasticities, tariffs and non-tariff trade costs. Using input–output analysis, we estimate the potential output and employment effects for 56 industries and 43 countries on the national level. The absolute effects would be largest in big EU countries which have close trade relationships with the UK, such as Germany and France. However, there would also be large countries outside the EU which would be heavily affected via global value chains, such as China, for example. The relative effects (in percent of total employment) would be largest in Ireland followed by Belgium. In a second step, we split up the national effects on the NUTS-2 level for EU member states and additionally on the county (NUTS-3) level for Germany. The share of affected workers varies between 0.03% and 3.4% among European NUTS-2 regions and between 0.15% and 0.4% among German counties. A general result is that indirect effects via global value chains, i.e., trade in intermediate inputs, are more important than direct effects via final demand.

Keywords: Brexit; Employment; European Union; International trade; Tariffs; Trade barriers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C67 D57 F16 R15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s40008-021-00241-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jecstr:v:10:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1186_s40008-021-00241-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40008

DOI: 10.1186/s40008-021-00241-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Structures is currently edited by Shigemi Kagawa and Kazuhiko Nishimura

More articles in Journal of Economic Structures from Springer, Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().