Dr Anthony Savagar

Host(s)

JI Research Theme

Anthony's research covers macroeconomics and industrial organisation.

It considers how firm behaviour and industrial organisation aggregate to affect macroeconomic dynamics.

Recent work analyses the contrasting productivity effects of firm entry fostering competition versus degrading returns to scale.

Structural Change at a Disaggregated Level: Sectoral Heterogeneity Matters

I analyze a disaggregated structural change model for the US economy in the post-Second World War period. My results reveal that the positive correlation between the relative price and the relative quantity of services with respect to goods, a fact that challenges CES preferences commonly used in the structural change literature, largely reflects the heterogeneous makeup of the services sector.

Movies

Why are certain movies more successful in some markets than others? Are the entertainment products we consume reflective of our core values and beliefs? These questions drive our investigation into the relationship between a society’s oral tradition and the financial success of films. We combine a unique catalog of local tales, myths, and legends around the world with data on international movie screenings and revenues. First, we quantify the similarity between movies’ plots and traditional motifs employing machine learning techniques.

The Swift Decline of the British Pound: Evidence from UK Trade-invoicing after the Brexit Vote

Using administrative transactions data from the United Kingdom, we document a swift decline in sterling use among British exporters after the 2016 Brexit vote. Through a novel decomposition, we document most of this decline comes from two sources: (i) continuously-operating firms switching from sterling to dollars or local currencies and (ii) reductions in transactions for sterling-loyal firms. In contrast, new entrants into exporting primarily invoice in sterling before and after the Brexit vote.

Uncovering the Sources of Geographic Market Segmentation: Evidence from the EU and the US

We develop a new approach to measure the sources of geographic goods market segmentation. Our cost-of-living approach uncovers the relative importance of price and product availability differences, while accounting for taste differences. We implement our methodology on regionally disaggregated consumer goods data in the EU and US. The analysis reveals that price, and especially, product availability differences are much larger between than within European countries, and are only marginally larger between than within US states.

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