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by eqvinox
2 days ago
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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.] |
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> "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.