L'Information est d'Or

This blog article is the combination of a work that I did with my colleagues Amit Kara with some work that my other colleagues Rebecca Piggott and Arno Hantzsche did.It was first published in NIESR's blog and is reproduced here with permission. The UK government published a White Paper on 12th July outlining its preferences for a future relationship with the EU. In this blog we compare the proposals outlined in the White Paper against other EU free trade agreements (FTA) and also estimate the impact on the UK relative to our central forecast, published in August 2018, that assumes a soft Brexit. Our results suggest that the UK is looking for a trading relationship that is similar in scope to the arrangement between the EU and Switzerland. If that is indeed the case, we believe that the EU will insist that the UK make concessions on the freedom of movement of people and also ask for a budgetary contribution to EU programmes related to the single market. We estimate that the econo...

I first published this article on the National Institute of Economic and Social Research blog . It is reproduced here with permission. For the non-British readers, the title is a play of words in reference to a famous BBC TV series, the Great British Bake Off. The British Prime Minister and four of her senior cabinet colleagues will in a series of speeches over the next few days set out a vision for the UK after Brexit. Those speeches will likely reiterate the government’s official goal of ‘free and frictionless’ trade with the EU. Less clear are the concessions that the UK is prepared to make to achieve this objective. In this blog we explore the likely trade-offs from the prism of a simple schematic and focus on three key areas of negotiation - market access, labour movement and budgetary contribution. There is no magic formula and the decision is ultimately political. With that in mind, the PM and her colleagues should spell the priorities on each of these three dimensions in th...

The World Economic Forum (WEF) released a new ranking of the most trade-friendly economies. Those are the countries that should benefit most from a World recovery when it occurs. The top ten is composed of financial centres - of which openess is a raison d'être - like Singapour or Hong Kong and North European countries - which have long had a tradition of trade - like Danemark or Sweden. It is interesting to note that 7 out of 10 most trade-friendly economies are European. It is good news for Europe. Or could it be a natural bias from an institution based in Europe (Geneva)? I have noticed with a lot of amusement that when the Indian Economic Times covered the story, they have put a picture of Russia (Moscow I think) to present Norway :) http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshowpics/4750684.cms The full ranking is the following: 1. Singapore 2. Hong Kong 3. Switzerland 4. Danemark 5. Sweden 6. Canada 7. Norway 8. Finland 9. Austria 10. Netherlands