16 November 2018

Vox EU: Rising Brexit uncertainty has reduced investment and employment

Firms expect lower sales and exports and higher costs

Companies place more weight on Brexit reducing sales than on it increasing them. On average, businesses expected Brexit to eventually reduce their sales by around 2.5%. There was also a net negative expected effect on exports, while unit costs, labour costs and financing costs were expected to increase. 

Brexit has reduced investment and employment growth

To estimate the impact of Brexit uncertainty, researchers analysed the change in investment and employment for firms exposed to lower and higher levels of uncertainty. This difference-in-difference approach quantifies the effect that Brexit uncertainty has had on growth of investment and employment by firms. Their results show the uncertainty is associated with around 6 percentage points less investment. This reduction in investment appears to have happened mainly in the first year after the referendum, between July 2016 and June 2017. They also found that that there is 1.5 percentage points lower employment for these firms, with the effect being larger in the second year after Brexit (July 2017 and June 2018) than in the first.

Brexit has lowered UK productivity growth 

Firms in the UK economy that export more to the EU, import more materials from the EU, and employ more labour from the EU were most uncertain and expected Brexit to eventually have a more adverse effect on their sales. They are also the firms that have the highest levels of productivity. 

By a batting average effect, if Brexit reduces the sales of high-productivity firms by more than low-productivity firms that is likely to bring down average UK productivity. Authors' estimates suggest this implies about a 0.5 percentage point reduction in future productivity. Given that the UK economy has had very low productivity growth in the last decade (about 1% in the last few years), this effect is worth around half a year of productivity growth. 

Conclusions

In this column researchers estimate that Brexit uncertainty (so far) has reduced in investment by 6 percentage points and employment by 1.5 percentage points, and is likely to reduce future productivity in the UK by half of a percentage point.

Brexit has not happened yet, and when it does, in March 2019, there could be further uncertainty over the transition arrangements and the arrangements that replace the negotiated settlement. This could lead to further employment, investment and productivity losses in the UK if policy is uncertain or increases trade costs. 

Equally, there could be a Brexit dividend (a relief factor that conditions are not as bad as feared), and some postponed investment could be implemented if the conditions under which the UK trades with the EU warrant it. For this reason, it is essential to continue to monitor the effects of Brexit uncertainty on businesses. The effects could go either way. [...]

Full analysis

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