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Did Austerity Cause Brexit?

Author

Listed:
  • Fetzer, Thiemo

    (Department of Economics, University of Warwick)

Abstract
Did austerity cause Brexit? This paper shows that the rise of popular support for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), as the single most important correlate of the subsequent Leave vote in the 2016 European Union (EU) referendum, along with broader measures of political dissatisfaction, are strongly and causally associated with an individual’s or an area’s exposure to austerity since 2010. In addition to exploiting data from the population of all electoral contests in the UK since 2000, I leverage detailed individual level panel data allowing me to exploit within-individual variation in exposure to specific welfare reforms as well as broader measures of political preferences. The results suggest that the EU referendum could have resulted in a Remain victory had it not been for a range of austerity-induced welfare reforms. Further, auxiliary results suggest that the welfare reforms activated existing underlying economic grievances that have broader origins than what the current literature on Brexit sug gests. Up until 2010, the UK’s welfare state evened out growing income differences across the skill divide through transfer payments. This pattern markedly stops from 2010 onwards as austerity started to bite.

Suggested Citation

  • Fetzer, Thiemo, 2018. "Did Austerity Cause Brexit?," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1170, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:wrk:warwec:1170
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political Economy ; Austerity ; Globalization ; Voting ; EU;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents
    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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