iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Josh Budlender

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

[Coda: this paper has taken a long time: had its genesis in 2019. So many people have graciously helped: see our acknowledgements! But extra special thanks must go to our PhD advisor, @arindube.bsky.social, who had so many invaluable comments & suggestions along the way]

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

We do a lot of other stuff, e.g. compare predictions to DMP & bargaining models. We also estimate a structural model, & (amongst other things) show that our mechanism substantially reduces intended returns to a wage subsidy/hiring credit☹️ Please read, & send us your comments!

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

And pattern also holds when we look at exporters’ responses to shift-share trade shocks! And point estimates are remarkably similar to LMS results. These identified rent-sharing & firm-facing labour supply elasticities are also some of very few estimates for developing countries

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

What about dynamic responses to such shocks? Again, prediction is borne out! Using LMS-style value-added shocks, we find lower wage & employment responses in constrained region, while the profit share increases. Clear breaks around productivity thresholds from x-sect exercise.

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

And this is empirical pattern we observe using cross-sectional kink design, leveraging ~20 min. wage regimes! With firm productivity (ACF) along x-axis, employment & profit share slopes change sharply at the wage kinks Constrained region is economically important: ~20% of firms

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

Per our simple model, we predict that firm responses to revenue-productivity increases depend on MW regime For unconstrained firms, workers benefit via higher wages & emp Supply-constrained firms instead absorb revenues into higher markdowns & profits. Wages & emp. do not respond!

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

We reveal new monopsonistic margin, where markdowns rise w/ productivity. Shows how link from firm gains to workers can break sharply! This may undermine inclusive development. Labour shares may be high while pass-through is weak. @cep-lse.bsky.social Working Paper: cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publica...

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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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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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

I genuinely feel sorry for government officials and politicians who have to engage with the Americans on the "merits" of the issue. How do you refute someone's deliberate fantasy where facts don't matter at all? It's like the Haitian cats and dogs thing all over again.

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

Mostly I think it's great that SA is, to substantial extent, avoiding getting sucked into this quagmire of nonsense. Perhaps a sign we're maturing. But does mean most of the "discussion" is led by grifters, morons and white nationalists (these categories not mutually exclusive)

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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

Of course there were both pros and cons to doing my PhD in the US, but until recently I almost always strongly recommended it to people. Incredible to me that in the space of a few months I now have real reservations about it and just don't know what to think.

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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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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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

Like, seriously???

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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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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Josh Budlender @joshbudlender.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Tbh setting up institutional social media accounts is not my favourite use of my time... if we have to start over again (and then risk being flagged again!) maybe we just forgo @bsky.app as a social media channel... (yes we will verify via our own webpage, but university IT stuff to navigate first)

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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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

Ofc in such a wide ranging piece there are going to be things which I personally am a bit unsure about. Key among them being perhaps overstating the elite-driven aspect of land expropriation politics. But a truly exceptional piece; also something all interested SAns should read.

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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

There are a million more things one could show here. The claim is so factually absurd it would be never-ending. South Africa has many serious challenges. But the idea that persecution of whites is one of them is just pure fantasy, laughable if it weren't so grotesque...

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

And I mean, let's just look at South African wealth inequality, in international perspective, with this in mind (source: amory-gethin.fr/files/pdf/Ch...)

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

Has been decline in inter-racial inequality, but almost all driven by changes at the top. There are ~same number of black African people in top 10% as whites. But this is a country where black Africans are ~80% of population, while whites are ~8%. And look at that top 1%...

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

At top of income distribution it's about jobs but also (generational) wealth. SA is obscenely unequal. And the top is absurdly white. This graph shows racial composition of each part of SA income distribution, from poor to rich. Source here & next tweet: amory-gethin.fr/files/pdf/Ch...

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

A big cause of this disparity is jobs and unemployment. And it's impossible to look at the numbers below and not see that it is directly a continued apartheid legacy (and main South African problem is *insufficient* redress & support to black South Africans, not other way round)

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

What do those observed income gaps look like? How about poverty rates by racial group, from the 2014/15 LCS (2022/23 data coming out later this year): Black African: 61% Coloured: 39% Indian/Asian: 6% White: 1% 61% of black Africans live in poverty. 1% of whites live in poverty

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

Firstly, yes it is about apartheid. One way to see this: racial classification was (is) messy business. Many were on edge of being classified one way or another. Impact on men of being classified white rather than coloured? Huge income increase which explains >90% of observed gap

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

[Note to non-South Africans: I refer to typical SA racial classifications here: black African, coloured, Indian/Asian, white. "Coloured" does *not* have same meaning as the outdated & offensive American term. It is a complex & contested South African identity category; you can Google it!]

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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

Gotta think a main motivation is really the ICJ case. Woe is SA for following the process of the “international rules based order.” Anyway, all this is going to do from US perspective is push SA’s (currently multipolar) foreign policy further away from the US, closer to China

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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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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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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Reposted by Josh Budlender

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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