Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP13439
Authors: Federica Liberini; Andrew Oswald; Eugenio Proto; Michela Redoano
Abstract: On 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom voted in favour of ‘Brexit’. This paper is an attempt to understand why. It examines the micro-econometric predictors of anti-EU sentiment. The paper provides the first evidence for the idea that a key channel of influence was through a person’s feelings about his or her own financial situation. By contrast, the paper finds relatively little regression-equation evidence for the widely discussed idea that Brexit was favoured by the old and the unhappy. The analysis shows that UK citizens’ feelings about their incomes were a substantially better predictor of pro-Brexit views than their actual incomes. This seems an important message for economists, because the subject of economics has typically avoided the study of human feelings in favour of ‘objective’ data.
Keywords: referendum; European Union; Brexit; voting; happiness; discontent
JEL Codes: D72
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| actual income levels (D31) | Brexit voting behavior (F55) |
| age (J14) | Brexit voting behavior (F55) |
| subjective financial feelings (G41) | actual income levels (D31) |
| subjective financial feelings (G41) | Brexit voting behavior (F55) |