Stellenbosch PhD Conference 2019

The Department of Economics and the Stellenbosch branch of the Economics Sociey of South Africa (ESSA) are proud to host the first ever Economics PhD Conference on 11-12 July 2019. The conference is an attempt to create a learning and research environment for economics PhD candidates registered at South African universities. The conference will bring together PhD candidates from different economics departments and provide them with the opportunity to present, discuss and receive feedback on their research. The learning and research environment created by the conference will facilitate network building and research collaboration amongst the conference participants. Selected papers will have the further opportunity of being published on a special conference issue of Studies in Economics and Econometrics.

Download the programme for the conference here.

The conference will take place in the Van Der Sterr Bulding, room 2118, Entrance 1: Bosman street, Stellenbosch Central, Stellenbosch, 7599.

Conference particpants will be accommodated at Huis ten Bosch: 3 Hofmeyr Street, Stellenbosch Central, Stellenbosch, 7600

Contacts: Bokang Mpeta (bokangmpeta@sun.ac.za), Kholekile Malindi (kholekile@sun.ac.za)

Keynote speaker

The conference will feature a keynote presentation by Dr Nara Monkam:

Maximising domestic resource mobilisation in Africa: The Untapped potential of property taxes

Dr Nara Monkam is the Director of Research at the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF) since February 1, 2014. She was also a member of the Davis Tax Committee, appointed from 17 July 2013 to 27 March 2018 by the then Minister of Finance, Mr Pravin Gordhan, to reassess the South African tax system. Prior to joining the ATAF, she was the Deputy Director of the African Tax Institute (ATI) and a Senior Lecturer (2009-2014) in the Department of Economics at the University of Pretoria in SA.

Dr Monkam holds a PhD degree in Economics from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta (USA) and both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Economics from the University of Namur in Belgium. Her areas of expertise and research interests center mainly on public economics, domestic resource mobilization, tax policy and tax administration, intergovernmental fiscal relations, and sub-national government finance.

Conference papers

Daniel Njau (WITS)

Earnings management of seasoned equity offerings in South African listed firms

Mashekwa Maboshe (UCT)

Corporate taxation and investment in South Africa: Evidence from the Neoclassical framework

Bernard Njiri (SU)

Specifying the trade and financial channels of external adjustment in emerging and frontier market economies

Olusegun Famoroti (UKZN)

Macroeconomic effects of external monetary policy shocks to economic growth in West Africa

Olawumi Awolusi (UKZN)

Economic growth-institutional fitness nexus: Evidence from BRICS countries

Wafula Nandelenga (UCT)

Fiscal policy and public debt sustainability: Is public debt sustainable in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Tina Koziol (UCT)

Euro area quantitative easing in a portfolio balance model with heterogeneous agents and assets

Theshne Kisten (UP)

A financial stress index for South Africa: A time-varying correlation approach

Philton Makena (UP)

Socio-political instability and growth dynamics

Patricia Funjika (UP)

Colonial origin, ethnicity and intergeneration mobility in Africa

Marvelous Ngundu (UJ)

The impact of China’s FDI and FDI from other sources on growth in sub-Saharan Africa through export upgrading

Gabriel Mhonyera (NWU)

Identifying priority products and sectors for bilateral trade negotiations: the case of AGOA beyond 2025

Storme Kennedy-Palmer (UCT)

South African historical interest rate volatility: Evidence of regime switching

Amon Magwiro (NWU)

Investigating presence of asymmetric exchange rate pass-through to imports and consumer prices in South Africa: The role of nominal rigidities

Everisto Mugocha (WITS)

Import tariff pass through effect and the spatial distribution of domestic consumer goods prices: Zimbabwe (2009-2014)

Allan Davids (UCT)

The Cape of Good Homes: Exchange rate depreciations, foreign demand and house prices

George Kinyanjui (UCT)

Emotions and revealed preference for rational altruism

Leon Matsuro (SU)

Risk preferences and job mobility in Zimbabwe

Zachary Gitonga (UCT)

Is migration an effective adaptive and livelihood diversification strategy for rural families in arid regions of Namibia? An application of constructed instruments using heteroscedastic errors

Tawanda Chingozha (SU)

A citizen science approach to classifying urban informality and other urban land use types using satellite imagery

Vuyani Maqanda (Rhodes)

Framing of the nuclear discourse in South Africa: an institutional economics analysis

Johnson Adelakun (UKZN)

Monetary union and inflation dynamics: The case of the West Africa Monetary Zone

Flora Kurasha (UCT)

The effect of hyperinflation on asset poverty in Zimbabwe

Sponsors

The organisers acknowledge and are grateful for spornsorship from:

Dean's Office, Faculty of Economic Management Sciences, Stellenbosch University

Research on Socio-Economic Policy (ReSEP), Stellenbosch University

Economic Society of South Africa

Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University

Bureau for Economic Research (BER), Stellenbosch University