Monday, June 27, 2016

What's This Blog About

I know it is a bit presumptuous to comment on the UK from Canada when my only connections with the UK are my Anglo-American grandfather and Scottish-American grandmother. But, here goes anyway.
The 23 June 2016 referendum decision to remove the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) marks the start of an experiment.  
Over the next several years and perhaps decades, I will be keeping track of the UK's economic and social progress relative to its EU neighbours. 
I will report on a broad range of indicators:
  • employment
  • personal income
  • Gross Domestic Product (GDP) adjusted for price and population growth
  • happiness/satisfaction (if I can find comparable data)
  • test scores of 15-year-olds in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
  • life expectancy and other population health indicators
  • greenhouse gas emissions
  • government bond ratings 
  • stock market index returns
  • foreign direct and portfolio investment flows
2015 will be the base year as the last full calendar year before the UK started its withdrawal from the EU.
I recognise that my simple approach will not prove anything about whether Britons were right or wrong to vote to leave the EU. Nevertheless, I hope that it will be interesting to monitor the UK's progress over the post-Brexit years to come.   
Due to the long-term nature of this reporting exercise, blog posts will be few and far between. At the moment, I am too pressed for time in my consulting business to devote much time to this blog. But, I hope to make time for future blog posts as post-Brexit data accumulate.     

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