[mike_hearn]

Just compare the British economy with that of France, or its own prior trajectory. Very similar economies, neighbours, one stayed in and the other left. France establishes there was no unexpected growth surge Britain missed out on. Continuing on the prior trajectory establishes there was no direct negative impact from leaving. Put them together and there's your answer.

[eqvinox]

Surely, somebody else has done that and either posted about it or even submitted an academic paper in some economy journal. Do you have any links?

[Ed.: nevermind, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/brexits-impact-on-the-uk-economy/ does what you described & it very much indicates an economic impact. You'll of course claim it's biased. Feel free to back that up with your own links to analysis.]

[mike_hearn]

There's no point submitting papers to academic journals given that the entire economics profession systematically lied about Brexit for years. Even Paul Krugman has publicly admitted, in writing in the New York Times, that the profession has been manipulating the public for ideological purposes:

> "What we’re hearing overwhelmingly from economists is the claim that [voting leave] will also have severe short-run adverse impacts. And that claim seems dubious. Or maybe more to the point, it’s a claim that doesn’t follow in any clear way from standard macroeconomics — but it’s being presented as if it does. And I worry that what we’re seeing is a case of motivated reasoning, which could end up damaging economists’ credibility."

Your link is an example of what Krugman was talking about. It's a press release about the NBER paper. It's not doing what I described, it uses an invalid methodology. It:

• Compares Britain to a synthetic country primarily based on the USA and Estonia, i.e. a country with a massive tech industry and a fast-growing ex-Soviet state still catching up from the damage caused by decades of communism. Notably missing: France and Germany. Then it assumes any underperformance in this correlation must be caused by Brexit. This assumption is invalid.

• Argues that if it hadn't left Britain would have had a sudden growth spurt out of nowhere that would have made it by far the fastest growing economy in the G7 outside of the US, leaving the rest of the EU in the dust. From where??

• Argues that if it had stayed British unemployment would be 4pp lower, but the current unemployment rate is 4% so they think staying in the EU would have reduced British unemployment literally to zero. Not a single unemployed person anywhere.

The paper can't even be described as biased, really. It's straightforward manipulation of the public. Anyone can "discover" any impact they like if they're allowed to make absurd assumptions about the counterfactual.

You can find other papers written outside of academia that are much more honest:

https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Perspectives_5...

> Contrary to initial concerns, Brexit has not had a major detrimental effect on UK–EU trade. Trade data doesn’t support the Office for Budget Responsibility’s claims that Brexit has caused significant negative impacts on the UK economy.

[eqvinox]

> You can find other papers written outside of academia that are much more honest:

> https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Perspectives_5...

> Catherine McBride […] is a fellow of the Centre for Brexit Policy

https://www.desmog.com/centre-brexit-policy/

The Centre for Brexit Policy (CBP) is a pro-Brexit, free-market thinktank

Source rejected due to bias, please provide another one.

[mike_hearn]

No.

[Uhhrrr]

Did you read the paper? Are there assumptions with which you disagree?

[eqvinox]

I did. First of all, its primary trade claims collapse when you look at more recent data from https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpay... - it appears 2022 was simply an outlier year. On top of that, I'm not sure the premise about "trade would shift away from the EU" is valid. It wouldn't capture an overall cooling of the economy. Further, a lot of trade goods cannot be shifted arbitrarily between trade partners due to logistics limitations. It's not even worth discussing though, considering it collapses on its own when you include 2025.

[mike_hearn]

The paper was written in 2023. Citing numbers from years after it was published doesn't make sense, as it didn't make any specific claims about what would happen in future years. It was only pointing out that the narrative from pro-EU economists was false, which is what you wanted a paper for.

2022 had a catchup effect from COVID. Nonetheless exports and imports are both higher than in the 2010s, exports have been rising since 2023 and exports to the EU are currently increasing, not decreasing:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/exports

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/imports

> Exports in the UK rose 0.2% month-on-month to £79.13 billion in March 2026 from £78.98 billion in February. Goods exports edged up 0.1% to £32.35 billion, driven by higher shipments to the EU (3.9%), while those to non-EU countries remained relatively unchanged.

The further we get from the actual date of leaving the less any specific trend can be argued to be caused by it though. It's especially tricky because lockdown impact was so massive it drowned out everything. But Brexit was years ago. None of the predicted economic disasters came true which is why its critics are reduced to playing with Excel.