The 4th Dial Development Conference on development economics was held in Paris on 29-30 June 2017. This conference, hosted by the Paris Dauphine University and the French Institute of Research for Development, provided a forum to discuss innovative theoretical and empirical research in development economics.
The French Development Agency (AFD) is funding a project within the Poverty and Inequality Initiative on Social Cohesion and Inequality in South Africa and a team of Saldrupians went to Paris to present and discuss their work at the conference within a special session hosted by AFD. The team included Murray Leibbrandt, Visiting Professor Hiro Hino, Research Associates Justine Burns and Lindokuhle Njozela, and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Muna Shifa.
In the session, Justine and Lindokuhle presented a conceptual framework for understanding social cohesion, used it to derive a social cohesion index and then used the index to measure social cohesion in contemporary South Africa. Muna talked about social cohesion in relation to racial and ethnic inequalities in South Africa and a researcher from AFD, Nathalie Guilbert, provided an analysis of poverty and inequality at the municipal level in South Africa. This two-day conference had an extensive program, which examined wide-ranging topics, including but not limited to the performance of companies in developing economies, leadership, networks, trade and inequality.