Not so far east? The impact of Central-Eastern European imports on the Brexit referendum

We explore the effect of the UK’s economic links with Central-Eastern Europe and China in the case of the Brexit referendum. First, we replicate and independently verify the Colantone and Stanig findings (2018a) on the effect of globalization on Brexit. Then, we extend their original analysis and demonstrate that although both Chinese and Central-Eastern European imports were significant causal determinants of the referendum’s outcome, exposure to Central-Eastern European imports was up to three times more important than exposure to Chinese imports. This may be due to cultural correlates of trade. Our analysis reveals that differences in media coverage between Central-Eastern European and Chinese economic news, as well as migrant population shares from these two regions, might have played a decisive role. Overall, the article also suggests that the import-shock method, as currently applied in the literature, is ill-suited to compare shocks with diverse origins.

本研究以英国脱欧（Brexit）公投为案例场景，考察英国与中东欧、中国的经济关联对脱欧公投结果的影响效应。首先，我们对科兰托内与斯塔尼格（Colantone and Stanig，2018a）关于全球化对英国脱欧影响的研究结论，进行了复刻与独立验证。随后，我们拓展了其原始分析框架，研究表明：尽管来自中国与中东欧的进口均为公投结果的关键因果驱动因素，但受中东欧进口冲击的影响程度，最高可达受中国进口冲击影响程度的三倍。这一现象或与贸易往来的文化关联有关。我们的分析显示，中东欧与中国经济新闻的媒体报道差异，以及来自这两个地区的移民人口占比，可能对公投结果起到了决定性作用。总体而言，本文同时表明，当前学界所采用的进口冲击研究方法，并不适用于对比来源各异的各类进口冲击。