Ihsaan
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ihsaanbassier.bsky.social
Ihsaan
@ihsaanbassier.bsky.social
Lecturer (assistant prof) at Surrey University, also associate at CEP LSE and SALDRU UCT.
Economist working on firm wage setting power, inequality and development. South African.
Thus a static min wage cannot force such firms to accept lower monopsony rents forever. And workers don’t automatically benefit from growth! Dynamic policy can help, like raising min wages w/ productivity or curbing employer power.

@cep-lse.bsky.social DP: cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publica...
When do employers share? Rent sharing, monopsony and minimum wages
When firm productivity or product demand rises, workers typically share in the gains through higher wages or expanded employment. We show that for firms under monopsony with a binding minimum wage, this link from firm gains to worker outcomes breaks sharply. Revenue-productivity improvements raise revenues but not wages or employment: firms simply maintain the minimum wage and absorb the gains into higher wage markdowns. 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. These results reveal a previously overlooked monopsonistic margin - productivity -induced markdown adjustment - and we show using a structural model that this substantially diminishes the intended returns of policies such as employment subsidies.
cep.lse.ac.uk
November 21, 2025 at 3:01 PM
One contribution is just method: literature on estimating dynamic elasticities for employer power (esp for recruits) don't use empirical designs, and so are likely biased and end up finding pretty strange results.

Hopefully this paper provides clean, easily replicable methods!
March 14, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Would be nice to directly check relationship between methods (ie empirical revolution) and research -- structural issues hard to randomly assing. @surbhikesar.bsky.social
October 3, 2023 at 5:43 PM