Scotland's economy is on the brink of recession and will take a "sharp turn for the worse" if the Brexit negotiations go badly, according to a new report from the country's leading economic research experts.

The report from the Fraser of Allander Institute, based at the University of Strathclyde, shows that the Scottish economy shrank in the final three months of 2016 and it's "highly possible" the trend could continue for the next quarter, which would mean Scotland has officially entered a recession.

The institute said the poor figures "can no longer be explained solely by the downturn in the oil and gas industry" and instead were confirmation that the country's economy has flatlined for two years and is "stuck in a cycle of low growth, weak investment, and fragile confidence".

The report goes on to say that, given the UK economy as whole continued to grow quite sharply in 2016 while Scotland's economy shrank – as shown by the comparative graph below – Scotland's downturn also cannot be blamed on last year's vote to leave the European Union.

While the report forecasts that Scotland's economy will grow over 2017, whether or not the next set of quarterly economic figures show that the country has entered a recession will be a "close-run thing".