Abstract

Any form of Brexit will impact heterogeneously in terms of sectors and regions on the competitive position of firms in both the UK and Europe. The ongoing uncertainty about the conditions under which the UK will be leaving the EU creates difficulties in structurally estimating these impacts. Using uniquely detailed interregional trade data on goods and services for the EU, we apply a novel methodology that disentangles region-sector sensitivities (elasticities) of firms’ competitive positions to (non)tariff barriers from the implications of different post-Brexit UK–EU trade scenarios. This enables us to derive the economic geography of competitive opportunities and vulnerabilities of Brexit of firms, along with the degree of uncertainty that surrounds these effects, independently from scenarios. Our analysis demonstrates that the adverse international competitive vulnerabilities of UK regions are much larger than those of the rest of the EU due to the dependency of the UK on the EU via global value chains. The impact on the competitive positions of firms means that within the UK, Brexit is likely to increase interregional inequalities. In contrast, interregional inequalities across Europe may actually fall, depending on the nature of the post-Brexit UK–EU trading arrangements. Moreover, the key political focus on the nature of the post-Brexit arrangements appears to be misplaced in that most UK regions are rather insensitive to the specific nature of the deal. As such, the economic geography implications of Brexit appear to be largely unrelated to UK domestic political narratives.

抽象的

任何形式的英国退欧都将在部门和地区方面对英国和欧洲公司的竞争地位产生不同的影响。关于英国将离开欧盟的条件的持续不确定性，在结构上估计这些影响方面造成了困难。通过使用关于欧盟商品和服务的独特详细的区域间贸易数据，我们采用了一种新颖的方法，可以将企业竞争地位的区域部门敏感性（弹性）与（非）关税壁垒区分开来，以摆脱英国脱欧后英国与欧盟的不同影响。贸易方案。这使我们能够独立于情景而得出有关竞争机会和英国脱欧的脆弱性的经济地理，以及围绕这些影响的不确定性程度。我们的分析表明，由于英国通过全球价值链对欧盟的依赖，英国地区的不利国际竞争脆弱性远大于欧盟其他地区。对企业竞争地位的影响意味着英国脱欧可能会加剧地区间的不平等。相反，取决于脱欧后的英国-欧盟贸易安排的性质，整个欧洲的区域间不平等实际上可能有所减少。此外，对英国脱欧后安排的性质的主要政治关注似乎被放错了地方，因为大多数英国地区对交易的具体性质不敏感。因此，英国退欧对经济地理的影响似乎与英国国内的政治叙述无关。