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The UK economy could have been about 3 percent larger by the end of 2018 had the country not decided to leave the European Union in 2016, S&P Global Ratings said in a note.
"Regardless of the form of the future relationship between the U.K. and the EU, there is no doubt that the U.K.'s economic performance has already suffered from the mere anticipation of Brexit," Boris Glass, senior economist at S&P Global Ratings, wrote in a note.
Glass said the 3 percent would translate "into an average forgone economic activity of £6.6 billion ($8.7 billion) in each of the 10 quarters since the referendum."
The size of the U.K. economy was $2.808 trillion in 2018, according to the latest figures available from the International Monetary Fund.
S&P Global Ratings' analysis suggests that the U.K. moved onto a lower growth trajectory almost immediately after the referendum. "We estimate that, by the end of 2018, the size of the U.K. economy was already between 2.4 percent and 3.4 percent smaller than it could have been otherwise."
"Only when the economy slowed to 1.4 percent in 2018, did it become more apparent that the anticipation of Brexit might weigh on U.K. growth, while the U.K.'s peers were forging ahead," the note said.
The most visible effect for the economy was the depreciation of the British pound, Glass said, which not only pushed up inflation, but also eroded the spending power of households. [...]