The Economic Consequences of the Brexit Vote

Benjamin Born, Gernot Müller, Moritz Schularick and Petr Sedlacek

No 1738, Discussion Papers from Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM)

Abstract: This paper introduces a data-driven, transparent and unbiased method to calculate the economic costs of the Brexit vote in June 2016. We let a matching algorithm determine a combination of comparison economies that best resembles the growth path of the UK economy before the Brexit referendum. The economic cost of the Brexit vote is the difference in output between the UK economy and its synthetic doppelganger. We show that, contrary to public perception, by the third quarter of 2017 the economic costs of the Brexit vote are already 1.3% of GDP. The cumulative costs amount to almost 20 billion pounds and are expected to grow to more than 60 billion pounds by end-2018. We provide evidence that heightened policy uncertainty has already taken a toll on investment and consumption.

Keywords: Brexit; European Union; Policy uncertainty; Synthetic control method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E65 F13 F42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2017-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.centreformacroeconomics.ac.uk/Discussio ... MDP2017-38-Paper.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The economic consequences of the Brexit Vote (2017)
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:cfm:wpaper:1738

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Helen Power ().