Doom-laden warnings of economic catastrophe before the Brexit referendum were driven in part by commercial worries by economists at the banks that stood to lose the most from a ‘leave’ vote, economists have found.

Analysts at institutions that faced the biggest potential losses from the referendum typically issued worse economic forecasts than those with less financial incentive to campaign to remain, according to Davide Cipullo and André Reslow of Uppsala University in Sweden.

Voters often have little economic expertise and so may look out for expert forecasts of the impact of different vote, even while those expert economists have big incentives to seek to influence the referendum through their projections, leading to a “propaganda bias” in their warnings over the impact on the economy.

Economists with more to lose and with more influence predicted GDP would grow by just 0.5pc in 2017 following a vote to leave the EU.

By contrast other forecasters estimated growth would come in at 1.3pc.