Economic effects of Brexit
on Ireland:
- Trade – both imports and exports –
is a major driver of economic growth and prosperity. The impacts of
Brexit on the Irish economy will not only translate into negative
impacts for Irish exporters in the UK market. Supplier industries
to the export sectors will also be affected.
- Likewise, Brexit will reduce the
preferential access of EU producers to the UK market and thereby
reduce the cost advantages that e.g. Irish agricultural products
have on the UK market relative to similar products, e.g. dairy
products from New Zealand or beef from Australia. Irish imports
from the UK will also be hampered and this can have important
knockon effects in the value chains relying on UK imports.
- Furthermore, it will have consumer
impacts in terms of higher prices of imported goods, but also
indirectly lead to higher costs for domestic goods, since imported
products and services feed in to domestic production of consumer
goods and services. Consequently, the production of the Irish
enterprise sector will suffer and the gross domestic product (GDP)
will be at a lower level in 2030 than it would otherwise have been
in the absence of Brexit. We predict Ireland’s GDP to be between
0.8 per cent and 2.8 per cent lower than the non-Brexit baseline
level in 2030 in the EEA scenario depending on the degree of
regulatory divergence following Brexit. Measured in terms of the
current GDP level, a 2.8 per cent drop
would correspond to EUR 7 billion
(2015-basis). The negative GDP impact could be worse in a customs
union scenario or FTA scenario, where the GDP impact could be -4.3
per cent (corresponding to EUR 11 billion in 2015-level).
If a political agreement can be
reached to avoid customs procedures in the customs union scenarios,
the GDP impact could be reduced to 3.4% in this scenario. In the
WTO scenario, GDP would be 1.0 per cent lower if no regulatory
divergence occurs and 7.0 per cent lower than the non-Brexit
baseline level of GDP in 2030 if UK regulation diverges to the full
extent of non-FTA partners, cf. Figure 13. A 7.0 per cent drop in
GDP corresponds to ¤18 billion on a 2015-basis
This impact via tariffs and customs
could be larger in this scenario, if the EU and the UK does not
continue to use TRQs on beef, as assumed. Brexit will not end
economic growth in Ireland. All results presented above are
reductions from the non-Brexit baseline, i.e. a reduction relative
to the level of e.g. GDP that would have occurred in the absence of
Brexit.
On the basis of an underlying long
term growth rate of 2.2 per cent per year between 2017 and 2030,
Ireland will still be more prosperous in 2030 than in 2017, even in
the event of a WTO scenario. Our results predict that the level of
Irish GDP could be 7.0 per cent lower in the WTO scenario with full
regulatory divergence compared to what it would otherwise have been
without Brexit in 2030. Translated into an average annual growth
rate between 2017 and 2030 (and assuming a gradual adjustment) this
means that Irish GDP would be growing at 1.7 per cent per year
instead of 2.2 per cent per year on average (assumed baseline
growth without Brexit). Under the EEA scenario, Irish GDP would be
growing at 2.0 per cent per year.
The impact of Brexit in the WTO
scenario is estimated to result in GDP being 7 per cent lower in
2030 than would be the case in the absence of Brexit. In the
short-term scenarios, we estimate a -0.5 per cent impact on GDP in
2020 in ‘soft Brexit’ and -2.1 per cent in ‘hard Brexit’.
Labor market impacts of
Brexit on Ireland :
- In the long run, the overall level
of employment in the Irish economy will be determined by structural
factors, mainly labor supply and the skills composition of the
Irish workforce. Seen in this perspective, the future trade
agreement with the UK will not in itself affect the overall level
of employment in Ireland, but an agreement that reduces trade will
without doubt affect the general wage levels in Ireland
negatively.
- Brexit will have short term impacts
on employment. These short-term impacts have not been quantified,
as the impact will depend on where the Irish economy will be in the
business cycle at the time of the biggest impact. Further, the
impact of Brexit will not have played out at firm level in the
short run. Brexit will also have long-term effects on employment at
the sectoral level, as some sectors will contract and others will
expand after Brexit.
- The change in labor demand across
sectors will give rise to wage adjustments, which will lead to
redistribution of workers across sectors with wages in each skills
group adjusting across these sectors accordingly. To assess the
isolated impact of a new trade relationship with the UK, we have
assumed no change in the long run labor supply in Ireland as a
result of different trade agreements. This means that we do not
model changes in labor market participation rates due to migration
or other factors.
- Under this assumption, any changes
in labor demand will be captured through wage changes.28 In the WTO
scenario, real wages will be 8.7 per cent below the non-Brexit
baseline level in 2030 for low skilled workers and 6.5 per cent
below the equivalent baseline level for high skilled workers. In
the EEA scenario, impacts will be smaller, with real wages being
3.5 per cent below the non-Brexit baseline level in 2030 for low
skilled and 2.6 per cent below for high skilled.
The economic implications of Brexit on both sides of the
Irish border:
- Discussions regarding the potential
impacts of Brexit on the island of Ireland have tended to focus,
not surprisingly, on social, political and security-related issues
regarding the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern
Ireland.
- As this report shows, how to manage
customs-related issues on this border have recently become central
to the whole question of the exact nature of the UK’s withdrawal
from the EU.
- While these social, political and
security-related issues are of utmost importance, there are also
other economic issues which Brexit raises for the island of
Ireland. Until now, they have received relatively less
attention.
- The UK is the Republic of Ireland’s
largest direct trading partner. In purely economic terms, the
economy of Northern Ireland accounts for only 2.1% of UK Gross
Domestic Product (GDP).
- So, from the perspective of the
Republic of Ireland, it is the effect of the EU withdrawal of the
whole of the UK which is critical.
- In addition, the UK is the country
through which almost all the Republic of Ireland’s exports and
imports travel. As such, any customs-related disruptions in
transportation and logistics systems between the UK and the EU at
the sea or air borders of Great Britain could inadvertently affect
the Republic of Ireland’s economy, even if ways are found to keep
the Irish land border completely open. For both parts of the island
of Ireland the details surrounding Brexit are therefore of critical
importance economically as well as politically.
- We know from the World Input-Output
Database 2013 release that final demand in the UK accounts for 5.8%
of the GDP of the Republic of Ireland and 6.1% of its employment.
In relative terms, Ireland is therefore the country which is the
most dependent on UK markets for its prosperity, followed by Malta
(4.9% of its GDP), the Netherlands (3.7%) and Belgium (2.9%).
- Not surprisingly, the level of
dependence on the UK economy is often commented on in the Irish
media with genuine concern. However, to put this into perspective,
the UK economy is much more dependent on the economy of the rest of
the EU, with a two-thirds greater level of dependence, than the
Irish economy has on the UK economy.
- Our analysis has calculated the
level of trade-related risk exposure that European regions and
nations face as a result of Brexit. This is done by considering the
effects on all trade flows and global value-chains criss-crossing
countries across the world, including the EU.
- Our results show that the Brexit
trade-related risk exposure of the Republic of Ireland as a whole
is 10.12% of its GDP. In terms of countries, the Republic Ireland’s
trade-related exposure to Brexit is second only in size to that of
the UK itself, at 12.2% of its GDP.
- The Brexit trade-related exposure
of UK regions varies between 9.8% and 10.2% of local GDP in
NorthEastern Scotland and London, up to 15.8% in East Riding and
North Lincolnshire, and 16.3% in Cumbria.
- In contrast, the average for the EU
as whole without the UK is only 2.64% of EU GDP. Exposure of
different areas of the Republic of Ireland to Brexit sits at
10.12-10.13%, while that of Northern Ireland is 11.7% of its
GDP.
- In other words, the UK is 4.6 times
more exposed to Brexit than the rest of the EU; the Republic of
Ireland is 3.8 times more exposed to Brexit than the EU as a whole
excluding the UK; and Northern Ireland is 4.4 times more exposed
than the rest of the EU.
- If we consider broad industrial
sectors, we see that in the Republic of Ireland it is the primary
industries which are the most exposed to Brexit – and in particular
those sectors related to agriculture – whose exposure levels vary
between 20% and 30% of the primary sector’s GDP.
- The Brexit trade-related exposure
of manufacturing industries in the Republic of Ireland is
approximately 18% of their GDP, while for the service and
construction industries it is approximately 6% and 2%,
respectively.
- For Northern Ireland, the Brexit
trade-related exposure of primary industries – mainly agriculture –
is 19% of primary industries’ GDP, for manufacturing it is 32% of
manufacturing GDP, for services it is 8% of service industries’
GDP, and for construction it is 1% of Northern Ireland’s
construction sector’s GDP.
- As such, although in aggregate the
Brexit trade-related exposure of both parts of the island of
Ireland are very similar, and also slightly lower than for the UK
as whole, there are also marked sectoral differences in the Brexit
trade-related risk exposure between Northern Ireland and the
Republic of Ireland.
- Both manufacturing and service
industries in Northern Ireland are relatively more exposed to
Brexit than their counterparts in the Republic of Ireland, while
primary industries in the Republic of Ireland are more exposed than
their counterparts in Northern Ireland. In particular, the largest
differences are between the relative levels of Brexit trade-related
exposure for manufacturing industries north and south of the Irish
border.
- What these observations imply is
that whatever the final UK-EU post-Brexit deal agreed, unless
exposure to trade disruption on both parts of the island of Ireland
is limited by remaining in both the customs union and the single
market, then the impacts of Brexit are likely to differ
significantly between the north and south of the Irish border.
The Welfare Effects:
- The rise of social media has
provoked both optimism about potential societal benefits and
concern about harms such as addiction, depression, and political
polarization. We present a randomized evaluation of the welfare
effects of Facebook, focusing on US users in the run-up to the 2018
midterm election. We measured the willingness-to-accept of 2,743
Facebook users to deactivate their Facebook accounts for four
weeks, then randomly assigned a subset to actually do so in a way
that we verified.
- Using a suite of outcomes from both
surveys and direct measurement, we show that Facebook deactivation
(i) reduced online activity, including other social media, while
increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and
socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news
knowledge and political polarization;(iii) increased subjective
well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in
Facebook use after the experiment. Deactivation reduced
post-experiment valuations of Facebook, but valuations still imply
that Facebook generates substantial consumer surplus.