Monday, October 24, 2016

Will Britain, Post-Brexit, Become the Japan of Europe?

Tim Harford suggests the possibility:
[P]erhaps the misfortune of the City will be beneficial to other industries such as software or high-tech manufacturing.

There is also the possibility of building affordable houses. Once the country’s tabloid press can no longer blame Brussels about red tape, they may turn their fire on the British regulatory thicket holding back the economy: land use restrictions. If we had built more houses where people wished to live, fewer people would be feeling left behind and blaming Lithuanians for troubles that were engineered in Westminster.

All this suggests a British economy with a larger presence as a producer and consumer of high-tech software and robotics: the Japan of Europe, although hopefully without the quarter-century of economic stagnation. It is not impossible. Data collected by Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Atlas of Economic Complexity project suggest that the UK has untapped capacity in industries such as cars and precision engineering.

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