The chronology of Brexit and UK monetary policy

The outcome of the Brexit referendum in June 2016 was largely unanticipated. Even after the "Leave" vote, surprises regarding the withdrawal process affected the UK economy. We draw on an official list of political events published by the House of Commons Library and daily data on asset prices and economic policy uncertainty to construct a novel instrument for Brexit surprises. Including a monthly aggregate of this instrument into a vector-autoregressive model of the UK economy, an adverse Brexit surprise lowers GDP growth while raising CPI inflation. We provide evidence that the Bank of England fended off a worse economic contraction.