Was Brexit triggered by the old and unhappy? Or by financial feelings?

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...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of economic behavior & organization Vol. 161; pp. 287 - 302
Main Authors Liberini, Federica, Oswald, Andrew J., Proto, Eugenio, Redoano, Michela
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier B.V 01.05.2019
Subjects
Discontent
European Union
Happiness
Referendum
Satisfaction
Voting
Happiness
Voting
European Union
Satisfaction
Discontent
Referendum
D72
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary: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.
ISSN:0167-2681
1879-1751
DOI:10.1016/j.jebo.2019.03.024