Research
Published Papers
Measured Productivity with Endogenous Markups and Economic Profits (2021)
Endogenous markups and short-run economic profits caused by dynamic firm entry lead measured TFP (Solow residual) to misrepresent underlying technology.
Labor Responses, Regulation and Business Churn (2020) with Marta Aloi and Huw Dixon
Labor responses to technology shocks may overshoot or undershoot their long-run level depending on returns to scale at the firm-level.
Firm Entry, Excess Capacity and Endogenous Productivity (2020) with Huw Dixon
In the short-run absence of firm entry, incumbent firms vary their capacity leading to temporary endogenous productivity effects.
Working Papers
Business Creation during COVID-19 (2022) with Saleem Bahaj and Sophie Piton
R&R Economic Policy
Bank of England Blog "Booming Entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 Pandemic"
Revenue Elasticities and Business Cycle Behaviour (2022) with Daisoon Kim
Firm-level revenue elasticity measures are declining in the US. This implies weaker propagation of firm-level productivity shocks.
Product Market Concentration and Productivity: Evidence from the UK (2022) with Oluwaseun Aguda, Yannis Galanakis, Kyung In Hwang, Jingwei Wu
Data analysis web app: https://asavagar.shinyapps.io/UK-market-structure/
Document market concentration and business dynamism in the UK. Industry concentration has a negative correlation with firm-level productivity.
Market Power in the UK (2022) with Kyung In Hwang and Joel Kariel
Aggregate market power measured by weighted, firm-level, price markups is increasing in the UK. The most important component is rising markups in services.
The Impact of "Eat Out to Help Out" on Firm Creation (2022) with Yannis Galanakis and Jonathan Hobbs
The UK's "Eat Out to Help Out" policy subsidized restaurant visitors during the COVID-19 pandemic. It led to an increase in firm creation in areas with participating restaurants across all sectors.
Returns to Scale and Productivity in the Macroeconomy (2022) with Joel Kariel
Returns to scale are rising and productivity is stagnating in several advanced economies. This can occur if rising returns to scale are caused by broadening span of control.
Policy Papers & Notes
UK COVID-19 Firm Creation Project (below reports now hosted on the project website)
Regular analysis of real-time data on company registrations in the UK to get an update-to-date picture of the effect of COVID-19 on business creation.
UK Business Creation during COVID-19 Lockdown (May 2020) with Alfred Duncan and Miguel León-Ledesma
Report 1 (May 2020) and GitHub site with code detail
Media: Financial Times, Kent TV, Telegraph, Kent Blogs.
Report 2 (June 2020)
Economics Observatory (June 2020)
Media: Telegraph
National Institute Economic Review (July 2020)
ESCoE conference poster and 5 min video (August 2020)
Product Market Concentration in the UK: 2006-2015 (2019) with Kyung In Hwang
Analysis of Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) data on product market concentration in the UK.