Export‐platform foreign direct investment and trade policy uncertainty: Evidence from brexit
研究关税同盟内贸易政策不确定性对出口平台型外商直接投资的影响，利用2016年英国脱欧公投作为自然实验，发现该不确定性负面影响了企业在英国投资出口平台活动的决策。
Abstract This paper analyses the effect of trade policy uncertainty in a customs union on export‐platform foreign direct investment (FDI). First, I develop a partial equilibrium framework with heterogeneous firms based on the proximity–concentration trade‐off that involves trade policy uncertainty about trade costs inside a customs union. Second, I derive an empirical equation that I test by exploiting the 2016 Brexit referendum as a natural experiment and using data on manufacturing greenfield FDI projects. The results show that trade policy uncertainty impacted negatively the decisions of firms to invest in export‐platform activities in the UK following the Brexit referendum. Moreover, I find that extra‐EU manufacturing firms preferred EU countries as opposed to the UK for new investments after the 2016 referendum.