Vacancy Duration and Wages, Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) 2025, with Alan Manning and Barbara Petrongolo. We find vacancy duration elasticities to posted wages of −3 to −5, leveraging exogenous firm-level wage policies. Ungated, Twitter, Voxeu.
The Firm-Wage Gender Gap Over the Life Cycle, Journal of Development Economics (JDE) 2025 short paper, with Leila Gautham. In South Africa, sorting of women into lower-wage firms explains half the gender wage gap, driven by life-cycle dynamics. Ungated.
Firms and Inequality When Unemployment is High, Journal of Development Economics (JDE) 2023. In South Africa, firms drive wage inequality more than in richer countries, with monopsony effects amplified by high unemployment. Ungated, Twitter, Conversation.
Monopsony in Movers: The elasticity of labor supply to firm wage policies, Journal of Human Resources (JHR) 2022, with Arindrajit Dube and Suresh Naidu. We estimate separations elasticities using a novel matched worker movers design leveraging firm wage policies, and find monopsonistic competition is pervasive even in low-wage sectors.
Locked down and locked out: Repurposing social assistance as emergency relief to informal workers, World Development 2021, with Joshua Budlender, Rocco Zizzamia, Murray Leibbrandt and Vimal Ranchhod. In South Africa, expanding social grants and introducing new COVID-19 relief effectively mitigates poverty for informal workers. Conversation.