Working papers

• "Collective Bargaining and Spillovers in Local Labour markets". R&R Journal of the European Economic Association (JEEA). See latest version, CEP Discussion paper, Twitter summary. Collective bargaining in South Africa triggers wage spillovers via interfirm worker flows, with profit margins declining as firms adjust.

• "Vacancy Duration and Wages", with Alan Manning and Barbara Petrongolo. R&R Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat). See IZA Discussion paper, Twitter summary. Media: Voxeu. We find vacancy duration elasticities to posted wages of −3 to −5, leveraging exogenous firm-level wage policies.

• "The Firm-Wage Gender Gap Over the Life Cycle", with Leila Gautham. R&R Journal of Development Economics (JDE), short paper (link). In South Africa, sorting of women into lower-wage firms explains half the gender wage gap, driven by life-cycle dynamics.

• "Rent-Sharing, Monopsony and Minimum wages", with Joshua Budlender. See WIDER Working paper. We identify a novel theoretical prediction, with supportive evidence in line with monopsony, that firms just-constrained by minimum wages absorb positive productivity shocks as excess profits, limiting wage and employment increases.

Peer-reviewed publications

• "Firms and Inequality When Unemployment is High", Journal of Development Economics (JDE) 2023, Publication, CEP discussion paper, twitter thread. Media: article, national radio. In South Africa, firms drive wage inequality more than in richer countries, with monopsony effects amplified by high unemployment.

• "Monopsony in Movers: The elasticity of labor supply to firm wage policies", Journal of Human Resources (JHR) 2022, with Arindrajit Dube and Suresh Naidu. Publication. 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. Publication, Media piece. In South Africa, expanding social grants and introducing new COVID-19 relief effectively mitigates poverty for informal workers.

 Work in progress

• "Firm Dynamics and the Labour Supply Elasticity", with Alan Manning

• "Job Search and Employer Market Power", with Jeremias Klaeui and Alan Manning

• "Minimum Wage Spillovers and Fairness Concerns", with Arindrajit Dube and Attila Lindner

• "Monopsony and labour surplus", with Joshua Budlender

• "Firm wage-setting practices under labour surplus: A survey of employers in India", with Rosa Abraham and Surbhi Kesar