Hello and welcome to the second episode of the CEO podcast series on the economics of populism.

My name is Sophia Besh. I am a research fellow at the Center for European Reform.

And for this episode, I'm in conversation with David Willits and Nicholas Crafts.

David Willits is the executive chair of the Resolution Foundation.

Nicholas Crafts is director of the Center for Competitive Advantage at the University of Warwick.

Thank you both for being here.

The topic of this episode is, was Brexit a rebellion against globalization?

And I want to start by asking both of you if you could sum up your answer to this question in 60 seconds. Mr. Willis, shall we start with you?

I don't believe that globalization is the reason for Brexit.

First, although there has been relatively flat incomes and earnings in the past decade or more,

I don't believe that is the result of globalisation.

And secondly, those relatively modest increases in incomes people have enjoyed don't seem to have been the crucial factor driving their voting for Brexit.

There was a big element of worry about the future, worry about migration, aversion to cultural and social changes in Britain.

Michael of Crafts. Globalisation to me means greater integration and markets

and that implies more trade, more specialisation.

It implies more factor flows, more flows of investment, people and so on. If you ask some of the things which

have caused discontent in the UK, and I think informed some of the Brexit vote, one

of those surely includes the bad economic outcomes for the North, includes long-term deindustrialisation the feeling that the deindustrialization there

contrasts with the success of financial services in the zone and secondly

obviously globalization or particularly European integration as well has led to

increased migration.

Personally, I believe that that has been good for most members of the British population.

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