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- Assessment impact of a Brexit on UK industry and GDP using the academic literature
2016 Assessment impact of a Brexit on UK industry and GDP using the academic literature
The academic literature of the last two decades suggests that a Brexit would be rather at odds with the British own economic interests insofar as it would depress productivity gains in the industrial sector and thus weigh on growth and employment.
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Assessment impact of a Brexit on UK industry and GDP using the academic literature
The best of the recent academic literature suggests 3 ideas on this issue:
a) the depressing influence of a Brexit on the British industry would not so much transit through its direct effect on trade and foreign direct investments than through;
b) an indirect, significant depressing effect on industrial productivity which;
c) could lessen the GDP growth rate by around -0.5% per year until 2030.
This order of magnitude is a lower bound for the total impact of a Brexit insofar as it only refers to the effects transiting through the industry and not, for instance, through the UK financial sector. Additionally, most of the detrimental effect of a Brexit would be concentrated on SMEs, because the SMEs import and export more, on average, than the average firm.