VOX – CEPR Policy Portal, 28 November 2017, by Benjamin Born, Gernot Müller, Moritz Schularick, and Petr Sedláček

It is hard to calculate the current cost of Brexit, because there is no obvious counterfactual. This column calculates the cost by letting a matching algorithm determine which combination of comparison economies best resembles the pre-referendum growth path of the UK economy. The difference in output between the UK economy and its synthetic doppelganger adds up to a loss of 1.3% of GDP, or close to £300 million per week, since the vote took place. This implies a cumulative cost of more than £60 billion by the end of 2018.

There is huge variation in the estimated cost of Brexit. Most studies forecast that a reduction in trade or a fall in foreign direct investment (FDI) – or both – will reduce output. For instance, HM Treasury (2016) uses a gravity model to assess the economic impact in several scenarios, and concludes that losses could be up to 6% of GDP in the long term. Yet the future relationship between the UK and the EU is highly uncertain (Baldwin 2016). As a result, estimating the cost of Brexit is difficult. Different assumptions about the deal that the UK will lead to different cost estimates. “[…]”

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