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Holger Breinlich.

Holger Breinlich

Associate

Expertise: international trade, trade policy

Telephone:
+44 (0)1483 689927
Email:
h.breinlich@lse.ac.uk
h.breinlich@surrey.ac.uk
Room:
SAL 2.26 B
Connect:
Website
Links:
CEP Trade
University of Surrey

Biography

Holger Breinlich is a Professor of Economics at the University of Surrey (School of Economics) and has held previous positions at the Universities of Nottingham, Essex and Mannheim. He is also a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Holger obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics in 2006. His work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Development Economics and the Economic Journal. He has also carried out research projects for the OECD, UK Trade and Investment and the former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Holger's research work has been supported by grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, the European Union, the German Science Foundation, the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust. Between April 2019 and April 2020, he served as the representative of UK academia on the UK government's strategic trade advisory group.

Current areas of research include:

  • International trade: the economic impact of free trade agreements; the economic consequences of Brexit; International aspects of mergers and acquisitions and of competition policy

Publications

Journal article
Trade, gravity and aggregation.

Gravity equations are an important tool in empirical international trade research. We study to what extent sector-level parameters can be recovered from aggregate gravity equations estimated via Poisson pseudo maximum li... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Joao MC Santos Silva and Dennis Novy

06 September 2024

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
Deep trade agreements: proliferation, provisions, impact

Modern trade agreements between countries contain a host of provisions beyond simple tariff reductions on traded products. Research by Holger Breinlich, Valentina Corradi, Nadia Rocha, Michele Ruta, João Santos Silva and... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Valentina Corradi, Nadia Rocha, Michele Ruta, João Santos Silva and Tom Zylkin

21 February 2023

Blog
Using machine learning to assess the impact of deep trade agreements

Modern preferential trade agreements contain a host of provisions that go beyond tariff liberalisation. By adapting techniques from the machine learning literature, this column develops data-driven methods for selecting ... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Valentina Corradi, Nadia Rocha, Michele Ruta, João Santos Silva and Tom Zylkin

08 July 2022

Blog
Import liberalisation as export destruction: evidence from the United States

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson look at US-China trade relations to examine how import liberalisation brings down import costs and increases competition, but can also lead to lower export ... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson

11 April 2022

Journal article
The Brexit vote, inflation and UK living standards

This article studies how voting for Brexit affected living standards in the United Kingdom. Using heterogeneity in exposure to import costs across product groups, we analyze how the depreciation of sterling caused by the... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson

01 February 2022

CEP discussion papers
Trade, gravity and aggregation

Gravity regressions are a common tool in the empirical international trade literature and serve an important function for many policy purposes. We study to what extent micro-level parameters can be recovered from gravity... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Dennis Novy and João Santos Silva

22 September 2021

CEP discussion papers
Import liberalization as export destruction? Evidence from the United States

How does import protection affect export performance? In trade models with scale economies, import liberalization can reduce an industry's exports by cutting domestic production. We find this export destruction mechanism... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson

30 June 2021

CEP discussion papers
Machine learning in international trade research - evaluating the impact of trade agreements

Modern trade agreements contain a large number of provisions besides tariff reductions, in areas as diverse as services trade, competition policy, trade-related investment measures, or public procurement. Existing resear... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Valentina Corradi, Nadia Rocha, Michele Ruta, João Santos Silva and Tom Zylkin

16 June 2021

CEP discussion papers
Gravity with granularity

We evaluate the consequences of oligopolistic behavior for the estimation of gravity equations for trade flows. With oligopolistic competition, firm-level gravity equations based on a standard CES demand framework need t... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Harald Fadinger, Volker Nocke and Nicolas Schutz

15 March 2021

Journal article
Voting with their money: Brexit and outward investment by UK firms

We study the impact of the 2016 Brexit referendum on UK foreign direct investment. Using the synthetic control method to construct appropriate counterfactuals, we show that by March 2019 the Leave vote had led to a 17% i... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson

01 May 2020

Journal article
Merger Policy in a Quantitative Model of International Trade

In a two-country international trade model with oligopolistic competition, we study the conditions on market structure and trade costs under which a merger policy designed to benefit domestic consumers is either too toug... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Volker Nocke and Nicolas Schutz

01 February 2020

CEP discussion papers
Exchange rates and consumer prices: evidence from Brexit

This paper studies how the depreciation of sterling following the Brexit referendum affected consumer prices in the United Kingdom. Our identification strategy uses input-output linkages to account for heterogeneity in e... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson

10 December 2019

CEP discussion papers
Voting with their money: Brexit and outward investment by UK firms

We study the impact of the 2016 Brexit referendum on UK foreign direct investment. Using the synthetic control method to construct appropriate counterfactuals, we show that by March 2019 the Leave vote had led to a 17% i... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson

24 July 2019

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
In brief... Brexit and outward investment by UK firms

Media reports have highlighted that some UK firms have started to move production abroad in anticipation of Brexit. CEP analysis confirms that there has indeed been a substantial increase in outward investments. The shif... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson

01 July 2019

CEP Brexit analysis Papers
Voting with their money: Brexit and outward investment by UK firms

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown rapidly in recent decades. Through FDI, firms headquartered in the UK can own and operate subsidiaries throughout the world. FDI opportunities give firms a choice between investi... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson

11 February 2019

Journal article
The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm-level

In this paper we study how international trade in goods and services interact at the firm level. Using a rich dataset on Belgian firms for the period 1995–2005, we show that: i) firms are much more likely to source servi... Read more...

Andrea Ariu, Holger Breinlich, Gregory Corcos and Giordano Mion

01 January 2019

Journal article
The Economic Effects of Brexit: Evidence from the Stock Market

We study stock market reactions to the Brexit referendum on 23 June 2016 in order to assess investors� expectations about the effects of leaving theEuropean Union on the UK economy. Our results suggest that initial sto... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy, Thomas Sampson and Ahmed Usman

01 December 2018

Journal article
The impact of trade agreements on consumerwelfare-evidence from the EU common external trade policy

This paper estimates the consumer welfare impact of the new generation of trade agreements implemented by the European Union between 1993 and 2013. We decompose the overall effect into contributions of changes in prices,... Read more...

Giuseppe Berlingieri, Holger Breinlich and Swati Dhingra

01 December 2018

Journal article
From selling goods to selling services: Firm responses to trade liberalization

In this paper, we focus on a new channel of adaptation to trade liberalization , namely the shift toward increased provision of services in lieu of goods production. We exploit variation in European Union trade policy to... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Anson Soderbery and Greg C. Wright

01 November 2018

CEP discussion papers
The economic effects of Brexit - evidence from the stock market

We study stock market reactions to the Brexit referendum on 23 June 2016 in order to assess investors’ expectations about the effects of leaving the European Union on the UK economy. Our results suggest that initial stoc... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy, Thomas Sampson and Ahmed Usman

07 September 2018

CEP Brexit analysis Papers
The Brexit vote, inflation and UK living standards

The vote to leave the European Union (EU) was an unanticipated shock to the UK economy that increased uncertainty and reduced the country’s expected future openness to trade, investment and immigration with the EU. Our r... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson

20 November 2017

CEP discussion papers
The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm-level

In this paper we study how international trade in goods and services interact at the firm level. Using a rich dataset on Belgian firms during the period 1995-2005, we show that: i) firms are much more likely to source se... Read more...

Andrea Ariu, Holger Breinlich, Gregory Corocs and Giordano Mion

09 November 2017

Journal article
International aspects of merger policy: A survey

This paper surveys the literature on merger policy in open economies. We first adopt a reduced-form approach to derive general insights on the scope for conflict between national antitrust authorities and on the gains fr... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Volker Nocke and Nicolas Schutz

01 January 2017

Journal article
Tariffs, Trade and Productivity: A Quantitative Evaluation of Heterogeneous Firm Models

We examine the quantitative predictions of heterogeneous firm in the context of the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) of 1989. We compute predicted increases in trade flows and measured productivity and compare the... Read more...

Holger Breinlich and Alejandro Cuñat

01 September 2016

CEP Brexit analysis Papers
BREXIT 2016: policy analysis from the Centre for Economic Performance

On June 23rd, the British people will vote in a referendum over whether or not to remain in the European Union. It is the most important vote that most of us will have in our lifetimes. And one that will have major reper... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Swati Dhingra, Saul Estrin, Hanwei Huang, Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano, Thomas Sampson, John Van Reenen and Jonathan Wadsworth

21 June 2016

Blog
No one would be spared: how the costs of Brexit would be distributed across households

That leaving the EU would damage the overall economy is now being treated as more of a fact than a speculation. But those for Brexit argue that the rich will be negatively affected while the poor will benefit. This is no... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Swati Dhingra, Thomas Sampson and John Van Reenen

03 June 2016

CEP Brexit analysis Papers
Who bears the pain? How the costs of Brexit would be distributed across income groups

Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Swati Dhingra, Thomas Sampson and John Van Reenen

02 June 2016

CEP discussion papers
How have EU's trade agreements impacted consumers?

Over the past two decades, the European Commission has negotiated a number of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) which contain both traditional elements of bilateral tariff reductions, as well as additional liberalisation meas... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Swati Dhingra and Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano

16 March 2016

CEP discussion papers
The effect of trade liberalization on firm-level profits: an event-study approach

I use an event study approach to present novel evidence on the impact of trade liberalization on firm-level profits. Using the uncertainty surrounding the negotiation and ratification process of the Canada-United States ... Read more...

Holger Breinlich

14 January 2016

CEP discussion papers
Merger policy in a quantitative model of international trade

In a two-country international trade model with oligopolistic competition, we study the conditions on market structure and trade costs under which a merger policy designed to benefit domestic consumers is too tough or to... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Volker Nocke and Nicolas Schutz

27 October 2015

CEP discussion papers
From selling goods to selling services: firm responses to trade liberalization

In the face of trade liberalization domestic firms are often forced out of the market, whereas others adapt and survive. In this paper we focus on a new channel of adaptation, namely the shift toward increased provision ... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Anson Soderbery and Greg C. Wright

26 September 2014

CEP discussion papers
Regional growth and regional decline

Since the early 1990s, there has been a renaissance in the study of regional growth, spurred by new models, methods and data. We survey a range of modelling traditions, and some formal approaches to the ’hard problem’ of... Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano and Jonathan R. W. Temple

26 July 2013

CEP discussion papers
Heterogeneous Firm-Level Responses to Trade Liberalisation: A Test Using Stock Price Reactions

This paper presents novel empirical evidence on key predictions of heterogeneous firm models by examining stock market reactions to the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement of 1989 (CUSFTA). Using the uncertainty su... Read more...

Holger Breinlich

02 November 2011

CEP discussion papers
A Many-Country Model of Industrialization

We draw attention to the role of economic geography in explaining important cross-sectional facts which are difficult to account for in existing models of industrialization. By construction, closed-economy models that st... Read more...

Holger Breinlich and Alejandro Cuñat

26 September 2011

CEP discussion papers
Trade Liberalization and Heterogeneous Firm Models: An Evaluation Using the Canada - US Free Trade Agreement

We examine the qualitative and quantitative predictions of a heterogeneous firm model à la Melitz (2003) in the context of the Canada - US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) of 1989. We calibrate our model to the pre-trade li... Read more...

Holger Breinlich and Alejandro Cuñat

01 May 2010

CEP discussion papers
Service Traders in the UK

We provide a novel set of stylized facts on firms engaging in international trade in services, using unique firm-level data on services exports and imports in the United Kingdom in 2000- 2005. Less than 10% of firms trad... Read more...

Holger Breinlich and Chiara Criscuolo

01 December 2008

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
Trade liberalisation and the market for corporate control

We know that freer trade between countries usually increases efficiency by reallocating resources from less productive plants to more productive plants. Holger Breinlich finds that it can also have a significant impact o... Read more...

Holger Breinlich

01 December 2006

CEP discussion papers
Trade Liberalization and Industrial Restructuring through Mergers and Acquisitions

This paper analyzes mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a previously neglected channel of industrial restructuring in the face of trade liberalization. Using the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement of 1989 as a natur... Read more...

Holger Breinlich

01 March 2006

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