About L. Alan Winters

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So far L. Alan Winters has created 83 blog entries.

Mrs May’s Impasse

13 March 2019 L. Alan Winters CB is Professor of Economics and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. With Mrs May's deal again defeated in the House of Commons yesterday evening, Professor L. Alan Winters asks how the UK got to be within 16 days of leaving the EU with no agreed plan for its departure or future relationship with the EU. In the video 'Mrs May's Impasse' Professor Winters explains how incompatible economic and political agendas and ill-considered red-lines led to the current impasse on Brexit and argues that one or the other has to give if the UK is to avoid 'No Deal'. https://youtu.be/zhvlxT1UNQA

By |2025-07-18T11:51:56+01:0013 March 2019|UK- EU|0 Comments
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Tariff Woes

12 March 2019 Julia Magntorn Garrett is a Research Officer in Economics at the University of Sussex and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and L. Alan Winters CB is Professor of Economics and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. Tariffs are the simplest and most direct of the tools of trade policy: they are taxes on imports. Broadly speaking, high tariffs help to shelter domestic industries from international competition, whereas lower tariffs increase competition and benefit consumers through both lower prices and permitting a wider variety of products to choose from. Despite saying that taking back control of its trade policy is imperative and that the UK may have its own trade policy in under three weeks (30th March), the Government has yet to reveal its policy for UK tariffs. The Financial Times recently reported that the plan was to eliminate the majority of industrial tariffs and, in the same vein, Sky News reported on the Government’s intention to cut 80-90% of all tariffs to zero. Many business owners are anxiously awaiting further information, as they may have only a matter of weeks to adjust to changes that could seriously affect their business. […]

By , |2025-07-18T11:52:44+01:0012 March 2019|UK- EU|2 Comments
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Not Fit for Service: The Future UK-EU Trading Relationship

14 February 2019 L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. Key Points: New research from OECD shows that the European Single Market dramatically lowers the barriers to services trade within the European Economic Area (EEA). Yet, far from prioritising the preservation of such access for UK services trade, the UK political and media debate is focused almost entirely on the much smaller goods sector. […]

By |2025-07-18T11:57:56+01:0014 February 2019|UK - Non EU|28 Comments
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Three-way voting paradoxes

16 January 2019 L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory This note supplements an article on ‘Organising a three-way referendum’ published on The Economist website (16th January 2019). It offers a worked example to show how the three main approaches to three-way ballots operate and some of the challenges they throw up. It reinforces Ken Arrow’s result that there is no ideal way of combining individual preferences to select one of three options. […]

By |2025-07-18T13:29:24+01:0014 January 2019|UK- EU|2 Comments
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Organising the ‘Second’ Referendum

17 December 2018 L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. The UKTPO exists to provide independent and objective advice on the economics and law of Brexit and trade policy. The question of whether to hold a ‘second’ referendum is essentially a political one. However, how to organise such a referendum is a technical question on which economists have something to offer. […]

By |2025-07-18T13:29:51+01:0017 December 2018|UK- EU|23 Comments
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The UK’s post-Brexit Trade Relationship with the European Union: Through a glass, darkly

10 December 2018 L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory  The Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration are being presented as a means to end the uncertainty about the UK’s future relationship with Europe. But in an explainer for the ESRC’s UK in a Changing Europe, Professor L Alan Winters argues that this is not the case. Uncertainty will continue regardless of what happens to the Withdrawal Agreement. Briefly, he argues that, if the Withdrawal Agreement is approved by Parliament and the EU: The backstop it mandates requires a customs union between the UK and the EU and that most EU regulations for goods will apply in Northern Ireland. However, there is no regulatory alignment between the rest of the UK and the EU and so, if the backstop came into operation, there would be border formalities both in the Irish Sea and as UK goods entered the EU via any other route. Negotiating a trade agreement with the EU will take a lot longer than the 21 months allowed for it in the Withdrawal Agreement, not least because every EU member state has a veto over trade agreements. The Political Declaration [...]

By |2025-07-18T13:30:24+01:0010 December 2018|UK- EU|0 Comments
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What should we make of the Government’s Brexit estimates?

30 November 2018 L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory, Dr Michael Gasiorek, a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Peter Holmes, Reader in  Economics at the University of Sussex both fellows of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. We welcome the Government’s estimates of the economic consequences of alternative Brexits. They are way overdue. The modelling was very competently done. But the assumptions made tended to favour the Government’s preferred position over other alternatives. On Tuesday, the UK Government released a set of cross-Departmental estimates of the possible economic costs of different Brexit options. They were based on the Government’s own modelling, which uses a technique known as a Computable General Equilibrium modelling and is based on the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) consortium’s world model and dataset. The aim is to model (very approximately) the important linkages in an economy over a medium to long-term horizon and to assess the possible impact of changes in trade policy on the economy. (Short-term modelling, over a five year period, was simultaneously released by the Bank of England, but we do not discuss it here). The modelling approach is relatively [...]

By , , |2025-07-18T13:36:57+01:0030 November 2018|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|0 Comments
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BP 48 – THE BREXIT BURDEN: A CONSTITUENCY LEVEL ANALYSIS FOR HAMPSHIRE AND SUSSEX

Download Briefing Paper 26 Briefing Paper 26 – November 2018 Authors: Ilona Serwicka, L. Alan Winters, Yi Jiang Key points Introduction The South East of England and cross-border trade Demography Sectoral profile, employment patterns and unemployment Analysing the impact of Brexit on those who are working in Hampshire and Sussex The impact of Brexit on those who are working in Hampshire and Sussex The Brexit shock by broad sector Adjustment of Brexit employment shocks for in- and out-commuting The impact of Brexit on those who are resident in Hampshire and Sussex Conclusion Annex: some modelling details Adjustment for in- and out- commuting: Step-by-step explanation References Footnotes Online Appendix Full results KEY POINTS Before the end of this year, British Members of Parliament have been promised a ‘meaningful vote’ on the final text of the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration before they are voted on in the European Parliament. MPs have the option to reject these, so a ‘no deal’ Brexit remains a strong possibility. A ‘no deal’ Brexit scenario could be particularly disruptive to the economy of South East England because the region is heavily engaged in cross-border trade. It is ranked first in the UK for goods exports and [...]

By , , , |2025-12-17T15:33:48+00:0020 November 2018|Comments Off on BP 48 – THE BREXIT BURDEN: A CONSTITUENCY LEVEL ANALYSIS FOR HAMPSHIRE AND SUSSEX
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BP 24 – The UK’s future services trade deals with non-EU countries: A reality check

Download Briefing Paper 24 Briefing Paper 24 – November 2018 Minako Morita-Jaeger and L. Alan Winters Key points Introduction Understanding what services trade liberalisation under FTAs can offer Why are FTA services negotiations so difficult? Legal and economic factors affecting FTA services negotiations The UK’s future FTA services negotiations with non-EU countries It is unrealistic for the UK to expect better deals than those of the EU Conclusion References Footnotes Key points Services trade liberalisation commitments in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and existing Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) do not go very far, because governments prefer to retain their ‘policy space’, which provides flexibility for changing regulations anytime they want. Services trade negotiations are different from goods trade negotiations because services trade barriers are all about regulations, and these are much more complex than tariffs to negotiate. While FTAs can narrow the ‘policy space’ between the GATS commitments and actual applied policy, they very rarely eliminate it. FTAs in services can provide a greater level of legal certainty to business activities than the GATS can provide. But even achieving this will be a challenge for the UK because it will have such limited bargaining power in [...]

By , |2025-12-17T16:07:29+00:0015 November 2018|Comments Off on BP 24 – The UK’s future services trade deals with non-EU countries: A reality check
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Briefing Paper 26 – THE BREXIT BURDEN: A CONSTITUENCY LEVEL ANALYSIS FOR HAMPSHIRE AND SUSSEX

This study focuses on the economic shocks that a ‘no deal’ Brexit would entail across the constituencies of Hampshire and Sussex. We take estimates of the effects of a ‘no deal’ Brexit on output and employment in different sectors of the UK economy and using the composition of employment in each constituency, estimate how each constituency will be affected. The novel feature of our analysis is that we allow for commuting and so convert the Brexit shock from referring to workers in a constituency to referring to residents in the constituency. With the South East region the most heavily engaged in cross-border trade, after allowing for the fact that people often live and work in different places, we estimate that the shock to residents of Hampshire and Sussex could be equivalent to the loss of about 43,000 jobs. Given that Brexit decisions will ultimately be taken on the floor of the House of Commons, this Briefing Paper provides a base from which Hampshire and Sussex MPs can start to assess the impact of Brexit on their constituents. Read Briefing Paper 26 – THE BREXIT BURDEN: A CONSTITUENCY LEVEL ANALYSIS FOR HAMPSHIRE AND SUSSEX See also: Online Appendix and subsequent work repeating the exercise for the full list of 632 [...]

By , , |2024-11-20T13:23:46+00:004 November 2018|Briefing Papers|0 Comments
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