While I did not think Brexit was a good idea, I also did not expect the vote to trigger a UK recession. Instead, I argued that it would slightly reduce the UK’s long run growth rate, and cited the steep fall in the pound as evidence for that claim. In my view, recessions in big diversified economies such as the UK are mostly caused by tight money, with supply shocks playing only a modest role.
There have been occasional news stories about foreign investment in the UK being scaled back, partly due to worries over continued tariff-free access to the EU market. In addition, the Financial Times cites a study suggesting a pretty large hit to growth:
According to a recent paper from the Centre for European Reform, the UK economy is already some 2.5 per cent smaller than it would have been if Britain had not decided on Brexit. The knock-on effect on the public finances is, it argues, £360m a week, almost exactly the sum that the fount of economic wisdom, Boris Johnson, promised would be available after Brexit. The figure is in line with other reasonable estimates. Philip Hammond, chancellor of exchequer, used to say that the British people “did not vote to be poorer”. But they did. Alas, it could get far worse.
The Centre for European Reform study they link to uses the following method:
Our estimate has grown slightly because UK growth underperformed that of our ‘doppelgänger UK’ –a group of countries whose economic characteristics match Britain’s (principally the US, Germany, and Luxembourg). As these countries did not hold a referendum in 2016, we can compare them to the UK to assess the cost of Brexit. The countries in the doppelgänger were selected by a computer program based upon the similarity of their economies to Britain’s.
And presents this graph:
I suspect the actual effect is much smaller, for several reasons. First, growth in the US during 2017-18 benefited from the corporate tax cut and the revival of fracking. Germany participated in the 2017 Eurozone recovery from recession, whereas the UK (having its own monetary policy) never suffered the Eurozone double-dip recession of 2011-13. By 2017, Britain’s recovery was already basically complete.
Recent unemployment data for the UK certainly does not look like a nation in recession, indeed it closely tracks the US:
To summarize, I agree that Brexit has slightly slowed growth, and I believe that it will continue doing so in the future. But the total effect so far is probably closer to 0.5% than 2.5%, and will probably remain very modest in the years to come. Still bad, but not a catastrophe. Of course the future effects will depend on the precise form of Brexit (hard or soft), and also the post-Brexit immigration policy.
READER COMMENTS
Lorenzo from Oz
Apr 12 2019 at 9:53pm
On the broader point of presuming uncertainty is bad, why is reasoning from an information change any better than reasoning from a price change? Does it not matter what form the uncertainty takes? Development of new technology generates uncertainty but not the same direction of uncertainty as does some negative information shock (like finding out a whole lot of derivatives are much less safe than previously thought). The market responses are typically very different.
One the alleged growth effects of Brexit, that Doppelgänger UK starts diverging before the referendum seems to support your analysis.
As I have never forgiven the EU for the Eurozone disaster, and I am appalled at how the EU actually operates (as a sort of arrogant, unaccountable technocracy) I am more pro-Brexit, in part because I am more sceptical about the EU’s long term prospects. For instance, it has now screwed up its interactions with all three peripheral European powers (Russia, Turkey, UK). One is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, three times looks like a pattern.
Thaomas
Apr 13 2019 at 8:43am
UK already was out of the one big disadvantage of EU, the Euro. And the Euro is the source of the other EU errors, the treatment of the PIGS. But this does not spill over to the UK except that slower growth by your nearest trading neighbors is worse than higher growth. Also the UK has been relative successful in fending off the worst of EU regulations like GMO restrictions and certainly would have a better chance of doing so inside than outside. The idea that UK alone would become sufficiently Neoliberal –free trade, cost effective tax/regulation/subsidy of externalities and market failures, open to immigration — to make up for EU mis-regulation is fanciful.
Lorenzo from Oz
Apr 15 2019 at 8:24pm
Perhaps not entirely a fantasy.
https://order-order.com/2019/04/11/young-people-pro-market/?fbclid=IwAR3ORr2mO7Si7tUIjdwJNIhn8fO3TiaemPp15YLRZ1X-0hSOUW6eCMVp9YM
TMC
Apr 15 2019 at 10:13am
“EY says Britain is the top investment destination in the world for the first time in the report’s 10-year history — overtaking the United States, which has held the top spot since 2014.”
If Brexit was supposed to hurt the UK, they’re doing it wrong.
https://apnews.com/c879be500904499a97f751ff40916c31?fbclid=IwAR1RaX3eVJsLPYOgf_faW90lxNzXbkBAe9BExCRKVwsgqCscBthV_V_9s1U
Comments are closed.