Senior Lecturer
Economics and Strategy Group
Undergraduate Teaching
- BS1163: Introduction to Microeconomics
- BS3362: Competition Policy and Economic Regulation
Postgraduate Teaching
BSM3: Econometrics of Performance Measurement
Research Interests
Dr David Saal is a Senior Lecturer in Economics and Deputy Director of the recently established Aston Centre for Crticial Infrastructure & Services (ACCIS) at Aston University. He is also a Research Professor at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin).
Dr. Saal has considerable experiene in the economic modelling of infrastructre industry costs and its application to infrastructure industry issues. Moreover, he also teaches post graduate modules on efficiency and cost modelling which are regularly attended by representatives of both infrastracture firms and their regulators. He has current or past research collaborators in Spain, Germany,Australia, Japan, and the Netherlands, and has received funding for infrastracture related academic research projects from the American Public Power Association, the ESRC,Ofwat, and Severn Trent Water. He has also provided consulting advice on infrastracture cost modelling, and/or the the cost implications of proposed changes in industry structure to the World Bank, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal of New South Wales Australia, and OFGEM. He is also co-author of a significant study published by Ofwat in 2004, which analysed the cost implications of horizontal and vertical integration in the English and Welsh water and sewerage sector. He has recenty completed a project updating these results and is currenty in the process of developing a further project analysing integration economies in the Japanese water industry.
In his role as Deputy Director of ACCIS, Dr. Saal is currently developing several interdisciplinary projects that are focused on evaluating current water industry reform proposals that aim to improve the economic and environmental sustainability of the water industry. These projects highlight the need to understand the complex relationship between the engineering requirmeents of infrastructure projects and the resulting economic costs of service provision, while simulatenously accounting for the regulatory, political, environmental and social inclusion agendas that influence the development of infrastructure industries.
