Anthony Savagar

Bio

I am an associate professor in economics at the University of Kent. Additionally, I am an advisor to the Office for National Statistics (ONS Fellow) and a visiting scholar at the Bank of England. Previously, I have advised the Department for Business (DBT) and Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) as an academic consultant, and I have spent visiting periods at the St Louis Federal Reserve and OECD.

My research interests are in macroeconomics and industrial organization, particularly focusing on how firm-level characteristics and strategic behaviour shape macroeconomic outcomes. Below are some questions that I am studying:

1. Why is aggregate productivity stagnant despite growing returns to scale at the firm level from technologies such as AI?

2. Should policymakers allow more market concentration if new technologies have greater scale economies? Or, are counteracting anticompetitive pressures more dominant?

3. Are sector-level price changes determined by differences in price-setting ability or differences in cost structures? To what extent can this explain aggregate inflation responses?

4. How do regulations on firm entry, which slow profit arbitrage, affect macroeconomic responses?

5. How much variation in aggregate productivity occurs because firms vary their capacity utilization, and consequently scale economies, over the business cycle?

To answer these questions, I develop dynamic general equilibrium models with rich industrial organization features that aggregate to determine macroeconomic behaviour. Typical model features include firm heterogeneity, endogenous sunk entry costs leading to slow firm entry, internal and external returns to scale, fixed costs, and strategic interactions within industries. I use firm-level production data to estimate model parameters in order to generate quantitative predictions and policy insights.

To bridge the gap between my academic research agenda and policy impact, I have an interest in applied public policy research, particularly in relation to the UK economy. This bridge between academia and policy focuses on using administrative firm-level data to understand the microeconomic structure of the UK economy and how this maps to aggregate outcomes. I have written papers on market concentration in the UK, firm entry and exit rates, market power and policies related to COVID-19. I also manage the Business Dynamics Dashboard which provides real-time insights on firm entry, exit and survival for different sectors of the UK economy. This work receives regular media coverage.