Rural-Urban Migration and Substance use

Rural-Urban Migration and Substance use: A temporal causal analysis using staggered difference-in-difference regression

Adeola Oyenubi and Umakrishnan Kollamparambil

 Abstract

We explore the causal effect of rural-urban migration on substance use in a developing country context. We also examine the effect of rural-urban migration on initiation of substance use and present post-migration temporal dynamics of the level of substance use using the heterogeneous robust difference-in-difference estimator. Analysis is based on a nationally representative longitudinal data collected over a decade in South Africa.

Result show that migration increases substance use among men, but not among women. The rise in substance use among men is not limited to the immediate post-migration period but persists in subsequent years. The effect is stronger for individuals who were below 35 years of age at the time of migration. Restricting the analysis to those who are uninitiated before migration, the study found that migration increased the likelihood of initiation of substance use for men, women and younger migrants. The findings remained consistent across various robustness checks.

Keywords: substance use; risky health behaviors; geographic variation; migration

JEL Codes: I12; L66; D12; I18

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2025 Budget Speech Seminar

SEF invites you to a Budget Speech Seminar on "South Africa’s budget and the challenge of structural change and economic growth"

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South Africa’s Budget and the Challenge of Structural Change and Economic Growth

Abstract

South Africa’s budget plays a crucial role in addressing structural economic challenges and fostering sustainable growth. This seminar explores how fiscal policy navigates issues such as unemployment, inequality, and productivity constraints while maintaining debt sustainability.

We examine the impact of government spending, tax policy, and infrastructure investment on economic transformation. Comparisons with other economies provide insight into effective budgetary strategies for long-term growth.

The discussion highlights key trade-offs in South Africa’s fiscal choices and the broader economic and political factors shaping the country’s budgetary trajectory.

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Advanced Modeling of Volatility Spillovers

SEF invites you to a presentation by Prof. Darko B. Vukovic on Advanced Modeling of Volatility Spillovers: Dynamic Bayesian GVAR and Fourier-Augmented Methods

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Speaker Profile:

Prof. Darko B. Vukovic          
Chief Expert (Scientific director) in the Centre for Market efficiency and applied finance, GSOM, SPB, Russia  

Dr. Darko B. Vukovic has over 15 years of experience teaching finance courses at the postgraduate, graduate (master in corporate finance, CFA, ACCA, AMBA, AACSB accreditations), and undergraduate levels at different global universities. He also serves as the Head of the International Laboratory for Finance and Financial Markets at the Faculty of Economics, People’s Friendship University of Russia. His research interests include digital finance, financial markets, financial forecasting, machine learning in finance, financial risk management, and investment finance.

His research has been awarded multiple times, like the Emerald Literati Award 2021 for “Outstanding Paper” (UK) and from Wiley, Top Cited Article in 2020-2021 (the journal Internet technology letters). He has published more than 70 papers indexed in leading index databases: Web of Science, Scopus, and ABS (CABS). During his career, he has reviewed numerous journals of leading publishing houses (Tayler & Francis, Elsevier, Springer, Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, Emerald, Sage, etc.) and has been several times a guest editor in international journals. Currently he is a member of The American Southern Finance Association (Jacksonville, US) and Southwestern Finance Association (Huston, US). He serves as a visiting professor at La Salle University, Bogota, Columbia and Fudan School of Economics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

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SEF Brown Bag: Kgotso Morema & Furzana Timol

SEF invites you to a Brown Bag seminar presented by Kgotso Morema and Furzana Timol.

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Kgotso Morema

Topic: Essays in Monetary Economics

Furzana Timol

Topic: Exploring the complexities of NEET in peri-urban South Africa: The influence of family environment and adolescent mental health

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Brown Bag: Simon Halvey & Marcio Pedro

SEF invites you to presentations by Simon Halvey and Marcio Pedro.

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Simon Halvey
Topic: The Values of Economic Evaluations of Social Interventions

Marcio Pedro
Topic: Essays on the Macroeconomic Effects of Market Power

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SEF Brown Bag

SEF invites you to two Brown Bag presentations by Sandile Ndlovu and Kgomotso Charlotte Nchoe.

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Sandile Ndlovu:

Modelling Sector-Specific Stock Returns and Volatility on the South African Stock Market: A Multi-Factor Analysis of Macroeconomic, Microeconomic, and Behavioural Risk Factors

Kgomotso Charlotte Nchoe:

FDI, Industrialisation, and Inclusive Green Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Brown Bag: Economic crisis and country-level heterogeneity in gender gaps in firm performance

SEF invites you to a Brown Bag presentation by Prof. Adeola Oyenubi on "Economic crisis and country-level heterogeneity in gender gaps in firm performance"

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Economic crisis and country-level heterogeneity in gender gaps in firm performance: Does pre-existing inequality matter?

Abstract

Nascent literature on gender gap has revealed that individual level gender gap is heterogeneous such that it is possible to identify individual characteristics that are associated with very large, as well as very small (or even reversed) gender gaps. I apply similar logic to gender gaps at the firm level using the most comprehensive cross-country data on informal enterprises in urban developing contexts. First, using a model with interaction model, I explore the relationship between pre-pandemic country-level gender-related inequality (measured by the UNDP’s Gender Inequality Index (GII)) and the gender gap in labour productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is based on the conjecture that COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates existing inequalities. Second, I generalize the interaction model using the Sorted Effects analysis which provides a complete mapping of heterogeneity in firm-level gender productivity gap by ordering the full distribution of the partial effects from largest to smallest with respect to the underlying characteristics of the population of interest.

Results show a robust positive relationship between pre-pandemic GII and lower productivity during the pandemic. Specifically, female-owned informal enterprises in less egalitarian (or high GII) countries experienced larger gender gap in labour productivity during the pandemic than their counterparts in more egalitarian countries. Further, I present evidence that show that (similar to individual level gender gaps) firm-level gender gaps are heterogeneous. Particularly, the largest gender gaps are found amongst female-owned firms in Bangladesh.

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Pre-1948 South African Economic Thinking

SEF invites you to a Brown Bag presentation by Caro on "Pre-1948 South African Economic Thinking"

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WHAM: Making philosophy relevant for economists

You are invited to attend a WHAM seminar by Professor John Davis from Marquette University on "Making philosophy relevant for economists"

Professor John Davis from Marquette University will be presenting "Making philosophy relevant for economists" (forthcoming, The Elgar Handbook of Teaching Philosophy to Economists). 

Abstract: This chapter discusses how philosophy could influence economists in the future. It emphasizes factors affecting economists’ willingness to incorporate philosophical ideas in economics, and distinguishes a weak case and a strong case for them doing so. Both are tied to behavioral welfare economics’ ‘reconciliation problem’ regarding the relationship between positive and normative economics. The weak case concerns the nature of individual identity in connection with how present bias and weakness of will potentially pit today’s and tomorrow’s selves against one another. The strong case concerns the normative scope of economic policy and expanding policy recommendation beyond its current welfare-only basis. The weak case imposes adjustment on positive economics; the strong case imposes it on normative economics. The paper closes with brief comments on how historically different sciences and fields draw on one another over time.

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Brown Bag: The end of ESG? Trends and challenges in ESG investing

SEF invites you to a Brown Bag presentation by Adel Dalal on "The end of ESG? Trends and challenges in ESG investing"

Short Bio:

Head of Research & Intelligence at DIAL Global, Adel, is an expert in data-driven research. She holds a PhD degree in Economics with a focus on Innovation Management and is a CFA Charterholder . Adel held a position of an Academic Lead of the ESG Executive programme at a major university. Over her academic career, Adel has generated research output on corporate sustainability, including ESG Glossary for Business. Adel’s expertise is further developed through obtaining an ESG Certificate by the CFA Institute. ​

Adel’s role includes producing research and analytics to back DIAL corporate solutions. Among the key projects Adel is leading are the DIAL Diversity Review and a corporate social performance assessment, known as S-DIAL model.

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SEF Brown Bag:An Economic Evaluation of HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis for Girls and Women in Zimbabwe

SEF invites you to a Brown Bag presentation by Francis Simmonds

Francis Simmonds Will be presenting on "An Economic Evaluation of HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis for Girls and Women in Zimbabwe".

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SEF Brown Bag: Unmasking the Invisible

SEF invites you to a Brown Bag presentation by Wayne Andrady

Wayne Andrady will be presenting a PhD Pre-proposal on "Unmasking the Invisible: Unravelling the Interplay of Socio-Economic Hurdles with Mental Health and Suicide Ideation among Young Adult Men in Vulnerable Urban Communities in the Global South".

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Brown Bag: Marx and Friedman walk into a bar

SEF Brown Bag Seminars invites you to a presentation by Caro on "Marx and Friedman walk into a bar".

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Brown Bag: Imperialism and Global Divergent Development Paths: A Very Long-Run Empirical Approach

You are invited to join the Wits SEF Brown Bag seminar presented by Omar Osman on "Imperialism and Global Divergent Development Paths".

This paper introduces a 500-year econometric model to investigate the role of modern imperialism in creating and perpetuating global development gaps. The paper contributes to the literature that studies global inequalities and persistent backwardness in world-system and long-term historical contexts. By highlighting the critical influence of foreign imperial domination on the development trajectories of both the imperial centers and global peripheries in the last centuries, the study challenges the prevalent notion that economic development is solely dependent on domestic institutional quality. Utilizing cross-sectional data of 127 countries, the paper provides robust empirical evidence that modern imperialism is the primary force in creating and sustaining divergent global center/periphery development paths over the last half-millennium. The study underscores the continuing influence of postcolonial imperial pressures on political-economic development in both the global centers and peripheries, despite the nominal independence of periphery nations.

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WHAM: "A theory of conventions, part I: conformity with conformity"

You are invited to attend a WHAM seminar by Professor David Dequech of the Institute of Economics at the University of Campinas, Brazil

A theory of conventions, part I: conformity with conformity

Conventions are socially shared rules or systems of rules of behavior or thought with two defining properties. First, the fact that others have adopted a rule, or are expected to adopt it, plays a role in leading someone to also adopt it. Second, the prevailing rule is not unequivocally superior to every other alternative. These properties are called conformity with conformity (or, in a longer expression, conformity of one with the conformity of others) and arbitrariness (or lack of unequivocal superiority), respectively. Closely related to this concept is a theory of conventions that deals with their two defining properties. The present paper develops the first part of this theory, focusing on conformity with conformity. It discusses several mechanisms through which the fact that other agents (are expected to) adopt a rule or system of rules may lead someone else to do the same. 

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