Since the EU referendum in the UK, a rich but mainly descriptive literature has emerged aiming to make sense of the causes behind the Brexit vote (e.g. Miles 2016, Becker et al. 2016, O'Rourke 2016, Tomlinson 2017). Given the political meltdown in the UK, this is more imperative than ever. An important cross-cutting observation is that Leave-voting areas have been ‘left behind’ and that the local populations are particularly reliant on the welfare state. In a recent new paper (Fetzer 2018), I bring together broad and comprehensive evidence which suggests that austerity policies since 2010 are an important factor that ... (full story)