iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Ihsaan @ihsaanbassier.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Working paper of perhaps my fav project, w/ @joshbudlender.bsky.social We know min wages can improve efficiency statically by reducing markdowns under monopsony. We show such worker benefits erode as firms' productivity rises, b/c some firms claw back markdowns rather than share benefits.

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

🚨New Working Paper!🚨 @ihsaanbassier.bsky.social & I start with simple stylised fact: lower productivity firms pay ~minimum wage, even as productivity increases. What does this mean for rent sharing/passthrough? Employment? Profits? Monopsony model + 🇿🇦 admin data = striking conclusions!

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SALDRU @saldru.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Join us at UCT for our 2-day December Workshop co-hosted with ERSA, discussing frontier research in applied economics for developing countries! 2 keynotes: Taryn Dinkelman & Joseph Kaboski. 12 presenters from 7 international & 4 local universities, & PhD student panels.

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SALDRU @saldru.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Last day to submit! Get your papers in!

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Really excellent short interview on ABC about the SA Expropriation Act and claims of "white genocide" with Prof. Ruth Hall (@ruthhallplaas.bsky.social), acting director of South Africa's leading agrarian studies research unit, @plaasuwc.bsky.social. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6__b...

youtube.com

Trump administration faces criticism for prioritizing white South African refugees

YouTube video by ABC News

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Notable how vast majority of SA knows this Afrikaner ethnic persecution/refugee thing is such obvious bullshit--literally made-up--that it's not even worth engaging with. You can't refute baldfaced fantasy with facts etc. But wonder if it makes reality less clear to rest of world

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Spoke with first prospective South African PhD student today who was planning on doing his PhD in the US, but now feels he cannot commit to something so long in such an unpredictable & potentially oppressive environment. There will be more.

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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.

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Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Like, seriously???

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Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Reading this appalling story, I don't see how anyone can in good conscience send their kids to Columbia -- not even as a political statement, but from a basic "will they take care of my kid?" standpoint...

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SALDRU @saldru.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

📢 SALDRU is proud to host the "South Africa at 30 Years of Democracy" conference at UCT! 🇿🇦🎉 A deep dive into our progress since 1994 & pathways for the future. 📅 Funded by AFD and the EU Commission, supported by the Presidency, Treasury ZA & NPC. #SA30 #Democracy #Research

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SALDRU @saldru.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Hello, Bluesky #EconSky! We're the Southern Africa Labour & Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at UCT, dedicated to challenging inequalities through policy-relevant academic research. We are one of the leading Labour & Development #Economics units on the continent. Explore our work: saldru.uct.ac.za

A picture of the University of Cape Town, where SALDRU is based.

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zeynep tufekci @zey.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

The Wuhan lab is STILL doing unsafe research that could trigger a pandemic AND getting prestigious pubs as incentive.😫 To fix this for the future, we have to admit we were deliberately misled on the possibility of a lab leak in the past. Horrid but true. Gift link www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/o...

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Zoomer Antimillenarian @surcomplicated.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

"Aligned to" is a way of saying that they have no proof that he provided anything that could be legally construed as material support to Hamas, or showed allegiance to Hamas in any way, but he said some things they decided are vaguely in alignment with Hamas and they're imprisoning him for it.

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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

UPDATE — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has now commented on the Trump admin’s detaining & attempted green card revocation of a Columbia Gaza encampment student negotiator: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Chotiner + Will Shoki combo as excellent as one would expect. Seriously, if you’re not a South African and only read one article about the Trump/Musk demands vs the reality of SA today, this is the piece. And an excellent discussion for SAns too! www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

newyorker.com

Make South Africa Great Again?

How the country’s post-apartheid politics may inform the world view of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

A good piece. This the flipside of Trump's maximalism, based on completely fabricated "facts" -- he actually makes it impossible for countries to comply, even if they wanted to. www.news24.com/fin24/opinio...

news24.com

Carol Paton | Rush to Washington a fool's errand as Trump sets impossible demands | Business

Trump has set demands that an ANC-led government could not possibly meet. Now is not the time to try to "explain" SA's position, writes Carol Paton.

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

So obvious that it feels absurd to even engage with this, but some statistics re the extreme economic position of white South Africans, in one of the most unequal countries in the world:

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Also, as someone who worked a bit with real asylum seekers in the US. If white Afrikaners wanna know real persecution? Go try navigate that dehumanising & punitive system. Even if treated preferentially, that will be far worse discrimination than Afrikaners ever experience in SA.

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

That Trump executive order re South Africa is absolutely insane. Just straight up deluded racist myth. So unmoored from reality that it would be impossible for SA to “remedy” these accusations even if we were inclined to do so.

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Trevon Logan @trevondlogan.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

The Race and Stratification Working Group at NBER will have its annual meeting on Friday, April 4, 2025! Dania Francis, Vicki Bogan, Ellora Derenoncourt and I are organizing the program. Submit your paper before the December 19, 2024 deadline! conference.nber.org/confsubmit/b...

conference.nber.org

Submission: Race and Stratification Working Group, Page 1 of 2 - MyNBERNBER: National Bureau of Economic Research

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Come attend the 2024 SALDRU December Workshop! 12-13 December, School of Economics, U of Cape Town. We've got a great list of speakers, and v pleased the keynote will be Dennis Egger (@eggerdennis.bsky.social) presenting "Slack & Economic Development". All welcome! RSVP: forms.gle/cwdPjw7iEjqa...

A flyer advertising the 2024 SALDRU December Workshop: Frontiers in Applied Economics for Developing Countries. The flyer contains an abbreviated programme. The full programme in machine-readable format is available on the SALDRU website here: https://www.saldru.uct.ac.za/2024/11/21/saldru-december-workshop-2024-programme/

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

More devastating reporting from Kimon on Stilfontein and the workings of these zama zama (illegal mining) operations groundup.org.za/article/trap...

groundup.org.za

The violent underworld of Stilfontein’s zama zamas

South Africa’s illicit gold trade is lucrative and controlled by gangs

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GroundUp News @groundup.org.za · 27/11/2024

Investigation into social grant fraud is a flop SASSA investigation into SRD grant application system fails to answer crucial questions Read groundup.org.za/article/inve... by Nathan Geffen

groundup.org.za

Investigation into social grant fraud is a flop

SASSA investigation into SRD grant application system fails to answer crucial questions

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Eric Verhoogen @ericverhoogen.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Two postdoc opportunities on industrial policy at Columbia: 1. Center for Political Economy's Firms & Industrial Policy Idea Lab: cwp.submittable.com/submit/30347... Deadine: Dec 2. 2. Initiative for Policy Dialogue: www.aeaweb.org/joe/listing.... Official deadline today (11/25)! Please spread word.

cwp.submittable.com

Columbia Global - 2025-26 Center for Political Economy Postdoctoral Research Scholar Opportunity

Position Summary The Columbia Center for Political Economy is seeking full-time Postdoctoral Research Scholars beginning July 1, 2025. Under the direction of the Center’s faculty Co-directors and Ide...

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

This is fast becoming the most boring & repetitive “debate” on this platform. So let me offer my two cents too 🤓 Yes, this will place will be incredibly boring if it’s mainly just politically-obsessed US liberals & progressives #onHere But hopefully that makeup will change as X keeps collapsing :)

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GroundUp News @groundup.org.za · 21/11/2024

Kimon de Greef, Ihsaan Haffejee and Kimberly Mutandiro have been at Stilfontein reporting on the trapped zama zamas. Here Kimon describes the illegal mining situation (Ihsaan's pics mostly) groundup.org.za/article/stil... Here Kimon describes the rescue operation: groundup.org.za/article/scen...

groundup.org.za

Stilfontein’s dangerous and desperate illegal mining industry

Zama zamas search for gold in a vast and unmapped underground network of tunnels

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Part 2, more on current situation. Be warned, very grim. Seems to me that cause of immediate crisis is indeed the police blockade. It means 100s of people need to come up in a short window, or starve. But their existing systems can only handle a few people per day. groundup.org.za/article/scen...

groundup.org.za

Scenes from a zama zama rescue

“They wanted us to go and rescue these guys, but it’s impossible.”

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Are there any unexpected downsides to using your own website URL as the domain for your handle here? E.g. perhaps some kind of indexing thing for the external tools like Clearsky etc? cc @thieflord.dev

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 19/11/2024

Despite a massive head start, BlueSky has now overtaken Threads in the US 👇

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GroundUp News @groundup.org.za · 19/11/2024

Stilfontein’s dangerous and desperate illegal mining industry: Zama zamas search for gold in a vast and unmapped underground network of tunnels Read groundup.org.za/article/stil... by Kimon de Greef

groundup.org.za

Stilfontein’s dangerous and desperate illegal mining industry

Zama zamas search for gold in a vast and unmapped underground network of tunnels

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Finally, in-depth reporting on what is actually happening in Stilfontein. Excellent piece, providing context & an explanation of what's happening now. First in a series. Not surprising it comes from Kimon de Greef & Ihsaan Haffejee, via @groundupnews.bsky.social groundup.org.za/article/stil...

groundup.org.za

Stilfontein’s dangerous and desperate illegal mining industry

Zama zamas search for gold in a vast and unmapped underground network of tunnels

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Damn I picked a good year to start following the NFL properly 😎 #Steelers

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

The only thing better than beating England is letting England think they might have a chance of winning and then beating England. 🇿🇦

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CSAE @oxfordcsae.bsky.social · 06/11/2024

📢We're #hiring 3 #postdoc researcher roles at the CSAE. 🔷@oxfordecondept.bsky.social w/ Dennis Egger 🔷CSAE w/ Stefan Dercon 🔷WWHGE @blavatnikschool.bsky.social w/ Noam Angrist ⏰Deadline: 15 January 2025 ℹ️ Apply: www.csae.ox.ac.uk/vacancies #researchopportunity #researchjobs

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Lady Jek @ladyjek.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Just found it for someone else lol - starter packs really have been a game changer! blueskydirectory.com/starter-pack...

blueskydirectory.com

All - Bluesky Directory

A curated collection of all things relating to the Blue Sky social media platform.

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

A few days ago I saw a webpage which collected ~all (?) starter packs across Bluesky and then let you search them by name... but can't find it now. Anybody have the link?

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Learning some surprising things about some of you while browsing your “following” list as I rebuild my network here 😏

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The Continent @thecontinent.org · 14/11/2024

Operation Vala Umgodi, a joint effort by police and the army to combat illegal mining in South Africa, appears to have a new motto: By any means necessary. In the most recent escalation by the task team, this meant starvation and dehydration.

continent.substack.com

South Africa's brutal response to illegal miners

Last week, more than 1,000 illegal miners were forced to resurface from abandoned mine shafts in the North West province when law enforcement officials cut off their food and water supply.

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

I’d be happy to pay a small fee but 2 minimal conditions for an ecosystem which has a paid tier: 1) paying a fee is not mandatory for all users 2) paying members do not get any kind of algorithmic/conversation boost Not interested in a network which excludes/marginalises people who can’t/won’t pay.

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

I thought someone would have made it already but they hadn't done so.... go.bsky.app/SmQgVK4

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 04/10/2024

Do you want to visit sunny summer Cape Town? Are you doing innovative Economics research? Present at the SALDRU December Workshop! While first full workshop will start next year, we are also holding an ad-hoc version this year, *12-13 December 2024*. Details: www.saldru.uct.ac.za/2024/10/03/s...

A photograph of the University of Cape Town's Upper Campus on a sunny clear day, with Devil's Peak and Table Mountain in the background. Image credit: jeremiapietersen on Pixabay

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 10/09/2024

Gauteng Department of Health. An unceasing deluge of scarcely believable dysfunction & abdication of duty. Life Esidimeni, Babita Deokaran, NGOs building boreholes, pregnant women on the floor, Nozuko Mkabayi, attacks on whistleblowers, unspent cancer billions. Killing people.

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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 01/09/2024

Remarkable—and damning—that this needs to be explained to a political party with supposed national aspirations in *South Africa*, but it seems it does. Excellent as per usual from Mondli Makhanya. www.news24.com/citypress/vo...

news24.com

Mondli Makhanya | Hi DA: You might not get it, but racism hurts | City Press

They may not know the feeling of being a victim of racism but they need to know that the hurt is real.

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