A brief history at ESSA

I'm at the #essa2013 conference and Bloemfontein and seeing old friends again have made me think of all the Economic Society conferences that I have attended over the years.

My first one was in 1997. I was a new junior lecturer at Unisa and the conference was in Potchefstroom. Having just finished Honours the year before in Potch I knew the people and place and could show my new colleagues around. I had just started with my Master's degree and didn't have a paper to present. The next was Pretoria in 1999. I went there with three Dutch students visiting from the VU. They and two of my other colleagues were the only ones at my graveyard session paper on “Fiscal decentralisation of road transport infrastructure and economic development”. I missed 2001, being away at Warwick and cannot remember where it was held.

In 2003 a big group of us went down to the Lord Charles Hotel in Summerset West. While the senior Profs were at the council meeting we took the bus and went wine tasting. One evening JD van Heerden offered us a lift to go out in Stellenbosch and we ended up having a great time at Tollies. I spoke about “Foreign direct investment in Africa: Do institutions and geography matter?” (Co-author Prof Wim Naudé)

In 2005 I was presenting papers everywhere: Denmerk, the UK, Japan and also at the Elangeni Hotel in Durban. I had two papers there. The first was with colleagues from Statistics, James Allison and Gerhard Koekemoer, with the title: “Convergence or divergence of South African cities and towns? Evidence from kernel density estimates”. The second with a Master's student Martin Luus and he presented on the topic: “Economic specialisation and diversity of South Africa’s cities”. I saw McCloskey there for the first time and had to sit at high table during the conference dinner, speaking to Tony Venables.

The conference was held in Johannesburg in 2007 and I had a bunch of papers:

• “Measuring the Export Capability of Cities and Towns in South Africa”, with Marianne Matthee.
• “On exports and domestic transport costs: An industry viewpoint”, with Marianne Matthee and Sonja Grater.
• “Measuring the quality of local governance in South Africa” with Jacky van der Merwe.

In 2009 we were back at the coast and this time in Port Elizabeth. Mine was the last paper in the last session, but a good one with Neil Rankin: “Agglomeration and manufacturing output: Firm-level
evidence from South Africa”. There Andrea and I went out to Barney's the one evening to celebrate Steve's birthday. Good times.

The 2011 conference was at the Maties campus and an excellent one. I worked with Derick Blaauw on the topic: “Micro-evidence on day labourers and the thickness of labour markets in South Africa”. This year there is a tourism paper (with Melville Saayman) and a volunteers paper (with Ferdinand Niyimbanira) in Bloemfontein.

So, thanks ESSA, it has been excellent. Good times and I have met lots of wonderful people. I recently heard someone say in a presentation: People yearn to go on a pilgrimage, but these days they call them conferences. I could not agree more.

ESSA 2013

This week the Economic Society of South Africa is holding its biennial conference in Bloemfontein. The programme is a showcase for the interesting work being done in South Africa.

For the first time in a few a years a South African leads the opening plenary session. Prof Servaas van der Berg will be speaking on Education, poverty and affluence - a South African perspective. His  ReSEP group at Stellenbosch produces key socio-economic policy work. There is also a presentation about the REDI3x3 project and SAJE editor Steve Koch will speak about what the journal is looking for in an article.

There are many papers on the programme that caught my eye:

• Prof Peet Strydom has put together a session on the history of economic thought. He will be presenting a neo-Ricardian view of income distribution, employment and growth. John Hart is discussing Hutchinson. Stan du Plessis is reinterpreting Friedman. Should be good.
• Dori Posel and Daniela Casale is presenting some subjective well-being work. I used to do some quality of life, quality of place research and I am keen to hear their take.
• Derick Blaauw and Ilse Botha looks at the subjective well-being of day labourers and the importance of location - combining some of my favourite fields.
• Neil Rankin, Volker Schoer, Gareth Roberts and more collaborators have a number of different papers on employment. I am keen to go listen to their results from a randomized control trial of a youth wage subsidy.
• I also want to hear Frederick Fourie on the NDP.
• There are a number of Economics education papers that look promising.
• My colleagues and myself have a few papers on the programme as well.

I have marked many more in my programme and expect to run around quite a bit between sessions. You can have a look at the programme at www.essa2013.org.za. I spotted a few tweeting economists on the programme, so you can also follow the essa2013 hashtag on Twitter.