Ihsaan Bassier is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is interested in labor and political economy, with the goal of understanding the labor market as grounded in power, institutions, and developing country contexts. His dissertation investigates the general labor market effects of local bargaining in the context of monopsonistic competition: He tracks firm wage-setting and workers’ movements in response to sectoral bargaining agreements in South Africa, with a focus on spillovers to nearby firms. Bassier is also a researcher at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town and has worked with the South African government on social grants relief policy in response to COVID-19.