Working papers & works in progress

Selected works in progress

(very provisional titles)

When do employers share? Rent sharing, monopsony and minimum wages with Ihsaan Bassier
[Latest public version]
When firms experience productivity increases or better demand conditions, they tend to share the benefits with their workers. An increasingly favoured explanation for this rent-sharing behaviour is labour market monopsony. But what happens when firms may also face binding minimum wages, as is empirically common? In our theoretical model, a monopsonistic firm whose preferred wage lies just below the mandated minimum will not raise its wage (i.e. will not share rents) or expand employment when it experiences a local revenue-productivity increase. Instead, the firm maintains the minimum wage and absorbs the additional revenue into a higher markdown. We find compelling evidence for these predictions using South African administrative data, based on a cross-sectional kink design as well as within-firm responses to internal and shift-share trade shocks. Our results demonstrate monopsonistic mechanisms in the labour market, and also highlight a potential disconnect between the level of rent-sharing and its elasticity.

Surviving in the dark: the mortality effects of reducing rolling blackouts
[WIDER/SA-TIED Working Paper | SALDRU Newsletter article | WIDERAngle Blogpost]
South Africa frequently experiences rolling blackouts (“load shedding”) due to shortfalls in electricity generation. This is a common problem across the developing world, and yet the developmental impacts of insufficient and unstable electricity supply, and the benefits of mitigating this, are poorly understood. I use the introduction of a unique load shedding reduction policy in parts of South Africa’s second-largest city, Cape Town, to investigate the mortality effects of load shedding and its mitigation. To identify these effects, I use a stacked synthetic control design that leverages the episodic nature of load shedding between 2014 and 2019. While the estimates are imprecise, I find robust evidence that the mitigation policy statistically significantly reduces mortality in Cape Town relative to other parts of South Africa experiencing unmitigated load shedding. The incomplete geographic coverage of the mitigation policy entrenches existing inequalities in the city.

Monopsony in queues: How relevant is monopsony in labour surplus economies? with Ihsaan Bassier

Informality and unemployment after land dispossession with Ihsaan Bassier and Surbhi Kesar

Household and individual data in the 2022 South African census with Amy Thornton

Racial segregation in South African formal sector firms with Ihsaan Bassier
[This work receives funding from the SA-TIED programme]

Working Papers

Stimulus effects of a large public employment programme with Ihsaan Bassier
[January 2024 version | Op-Ed]
Media: CNBC Africa, Newzroom Afrika

Estimating employment responses to South Africa’s Employment Tax Incentive with Amina Ebrahim
[July 2021 version]

Markups and market structure in South Africa: What can be learnt from new administrative data?
[August 2019 version]

South African poverty lines: A review and two new money-metric thresholds with Murray Leibbrandt and Ingrid Woolard
[August 2015 version | Op-Ed]