UCT School of Economics Seminar

September 30, 2024 at 13:00

Speaker: Jacob Bor and Dorina Onoya (Boston University & University of Witwatersrand) 

Title: Integrating “Undetectable = Untransmittable” into HIV counselling: a randomized trial in South Africa 

Abstract: People living with HIV (PLHIV) who are virally suppressed cannot transmit the virus sexually: “Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U)”. However, in many settings, PLHIV do not receive information on U=U as part of routine HIV counselling. We developed a video-based App, called “Undetectable & You”, to deliver information on U=U through testimonials of PLHIV and their partners as part of HIV counseling in South Africa. We piloted the App in a parallel, two-arm randomized trial (n=135) at primary health facilities in Johannesburg. The intervention increased U=U knowledge, i.e. the percentage believing there was zero risk of transmission if virally suppressed, from 42% (control) to 76% (intervention) (p<0.01). Viral suppression (<200 copies at 3-10 months) was 33% in the control arm and in 52% in the treatment arm (risk difference: 19%; p=0.028). Effects were largest among men and those with previous care interruptions. The gap in clinical retention between intervention and control participants widened over time, suggesting changes in underlying treatment motivations.  

Calendar for the academic year 2024

Past speakers

• August 5, 2024: Safia Khan (University of Cape Town): "The Impact of Labour Market Status on Child Care Hours under the Covid-19 Lockdown in South Africa"

• June 17, 2024: Chloë Allison (South African Reserve Bank): "Cash transfers and prices: what is the impact of social welfare on prices?"

• May 27, 2024: Katherine Eyal (SALDRU, University of Cape Town): "Temporal Patterns of Depressive Symptoms in Tuberculosis Patients: Longitudinal Analysis from the HAALSI Cohort in South Africa"

• May 13, 2024: Kristina Manysheva (Columbia Business School): "Persistence of Inequality after Apartheid: Assessing the Role of Geography and Skills"

• May 6, 2024: Andrea Presbitero (International Monetary Fund): "April 2024 World Economic Outlook, Chapter 4: Trading Places: Real Spillovers from G20 Emerging Markets"

• April 29, 2024: Simon Franklin (Queen Mary University of London): "Urban Public Works in Spatial Equilibrium: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia"

• April 8, 2024: Allan Davids (University of Cape Town): "Without reserve: home foreclosure discounts"

• March 25, 2024: Leonard Wantchekon (Princeton University): "Deliberation and Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Benin"

• March 18, 2024: Hikmet Gunay (University of Manitoba): "Experiments on the Different Numbers of Bidders in Sequential Auctions"

• March 11, 2024: Stefan Dercon (University of Oxford): “South Africa and the elite bargain for development” and Dean Karlan (Northwestern University): Empowering the Unempowered: Cash and Cash-Plus Approaches to Extreme Poverty".

• March 4, 2024: Martin Strobel (Maastricht University), "On the Evolution of Attitudes to Risk"

• February 19, 2024: Frank Stähler (University of Tübingen), "Disentangling frictions across the world: markups versus trade costs", joint with Benedikt Heid

• February 12, 2024:  Klára Kantová (Charles University, Prague), “The Elasticity of Substitution between Native and Immigrant Labor: A Meta-Analysis”, joint with Tomas Havranek, and Zuzana Irsova

• February 1, 2024: Yannick Timmer (Federal Reserve Board), "Intervening Against the Fed", joint with Alexander Rodnyansky, Naoki Yago

• November 13, 2023: Richard Kima (UNU-National Treasury in Pretoria), “Estimating the macroeconomic costs of power outages in South Africa", joint with Kabelo Makhanya, Malope Mampholo and Abrams Mbu

• October 30, 2023: Marc Jeuland (Duke University), "Time-money tradeoffs and the value of the time that women spend obtaining firewood"

• October 16, 2023: Rafael de la Vega (UNU-MERIT), "Structural change and income inequality: a meta-analysis"

• September 18, 2023: Daniel Urquijo (European University Institute), "The Politics of Transitional Justice: Evidence from South Africa

• September 13, 2023: Sean Higgis (Northwestern University), "Why Small Firms Fail to Adopt Profitable Opportunities", joint with Paul Gertler, Ulrike Malmendier, Waldo Ojeda

• September 11, 2023: Lucas Argentieri Mariani  (ERSA & University of Milano-Bicocca), "Unleashing International Trade through Financial Integration: Evidence from a Cross-Border Payment System", joint with Gustavo Cortes, Vinicios Sant'Anna

• July 31, 2023: Dan Ben-Moshe (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), "Regulation and frontier housing supply" , joint with David Genesove

• July 10, 2023: Nathan Kettlewell (University of Technology Sydney), “The heritability of economic preferences”

• June 26, 2023: Fernando García-Barragán (University of Guanajuato), "Bridging the Gap: Analyzing the Effectiveness of Government Investment Announcements and Materializations" 

• May 25, 2023: Andrew Dabalen (Chief Economist, Africa Region, the World Bank Group), "Positioning Africa to Claim the Post-COVID 21st Century"

• May 2, 2023: Rémi Bazillier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): “Minimum Wages and Firms in Africa”, joint with Maria Moraga Fernandez

• April 24, 2023: Aneta Hryckiewicz (Kozminski University): "Navigating the Digital Frontier: Unraveling the Impact of Bank Digitalization on Idiosyncratic and Systemic Risk", joint with M. Borsuk, K. Tchorzewska, D. Tsomocos 

• April 17: Grove Steyn (Meridian Economics): "Resolving the power crisis - Lessons from 2022", joint with Ndivhuwo Musehane & Peter Klein

• April 13: Justin Visagie (Human Sciences Research Council): "Cities, Productivity and Jobs in South Africa", joint with Ivan Turok 

• March 27: Tim Kohler (DPRU, University of Cape Town): "The Evolution of Wages and Wage Inequality during the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Africa"

• March 20: Philippe Tobler (University of Zurich): "Risk in the brain"

• March 17: Adam Tooze (Columbia University): "The global economy, climate change and inequality"

• March 16: John Hey (University of York): "An Experimental Comparison of Two Exchange Economies: Long-Lived Asset versus Short-Lived Asset", joint with Enrica Carbone and Tibor Neugebauer

• March 7: Tomas Havranek (Charles University, Prague): "Publication and Identification Biases in Measuring the Intertemporal Substitution of Labor Supply", joint with Ali Elminejad, Roman Horvath , and Zuzana Irsova

• February 27: Michael Power (Ninety One): "The American Emperor's Increasingly Threadbare Clothes: For how much longer will the US enjoy its 'Exorbitant Privilege '?

• February 20: Asha Sundaram (University of Auckland), "Foreign Direct Investment, Geography and Welfare", joint with Jose Asturias, Marco Sanfilippo

• February 13: Kasper Kragh Balke (University of Oslo), "Down-payment requirements and consumption responses to income shocks"

• January 30: Dean Yang (University of Michigan), "Abundance from Abroad: Migrant Income and Long-Run Economic Development", joiint with Gaurav Khanna, Emir Murathanoglu, Caroline B. Theoharides

• December 12: Jonathan Stöterau (World Bank), "A Meta-Analysis of Vocational Training for Youth: Human Capital or Signaling?"

• Novermber 21: Hanjo Odendaal (University of Stellenbosch), "African Time Travellers:  What can we learn from 500 years of written accounts?", joint with Edward Kerby, Alexander Moradi

• October 31: Kjetil Bjorvatn (NHH Norwegian School of Economics), "Childcare, labor supply, and business development: Experimental evidence from Uganda"

• October 25: Herbert-Michael Zapf (Brest Business School & Brussels School of Governance), "European Integration, BREXIT, Euro and the War in Ukraine"

• October 17: Olivia Chen (International Energy Agency), "World Energy Employment" 

• September 12: Jesse Naidoo (University of Pretoria), "Marginal Incentives for Birth Spacing"

• September 5: Shivani Wadehra (Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi), "Nudging households to segregate at source"

• August 29: Soheil Sibdari (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth), "The Impact of Nonstop Flights on Trade In the Transatlantic Market"

• August 1: Lucas Argentieri Mariani  (ERSA & University of Milano-Bicocca), "Bank Branches, Crime and Financial Technology Adoption: Evidence from Brazil"

• July 25: Pallab Mozumder (Florida International University), "Conservation Auctions and Payments for Multiple Ecosystems Services: A Field Experiment in Oaxaca, Mexico"

• May 23: Daan Steenkamp (CEO of Codera Analytics), "EconData open data platform demonstration"

• April 11: Yonas Alem (University of Gothenburg), "Saving Africa’s Tropical Forests through Energy Transition: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Tanzania", joint with Remidius D. Ruhinduka

• April 4: Kevin A. Bryan (University of Toronto), "Entrepreneurial Migration", joint with Jorge Guzman

• March 14: Matthew Olckers (UNSW Sydney), "How Do Speculators Respond to Their Past Performance? Evidence from Sports Betting in Kenya"

• March 7: David Fadiran (University of Cape Town), "Title: Wage Subsidies and Youth Employment: Firm-Level Evidence from South Africa", joint with Andinet Woldemichael, Hammed Amusa

• February 28: Godfrey Manofa (University of Cape Town), "Impact of Crime on Firm Entry: Evidence from South Africa", joint with Lawrence Edwards, Asha Sundaram

• February 14: Harold Kincaid (University of Cape Town), "Formal vs. Contextualist Approaches to the Variable Selection Problem"

Academic year 2021:

• December 6: Von Fintel, Dieter (University of Stellenbosch), The negative impact of farm input subsidies on women’s agency

• November 29: Abebe Shimeles (AERC), "Threats of Audits and Tax Morale in Africa: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment in Ethiopia", Daniel Z.Gurara and Firew Woldeyes

• November 22: Victor Pouliquen (University of Oxford), "The Media or the Message? Experimental Evidence on Mass Media and Modern Contraception Uptake in Burkina Faso", joint with Rachel Glennerster, Joanna Murray

• November 15: Moussa P. Blimpo (World Bank & University of Toronto), "Asymmetry in Civic Information: An Experiment on Tax Participation among Informal Firms in Togo", Paul Castaneda Dower

• October 25: Sam Jones (UNU-WIDER (Mozambique) & University of Copenhagen), "Doing business while holding public office: Evidence from Mozambique’s firm registry", joint with Felix Schilling, Finn Tarp

• October 18: Martin Abel (Middlebury College), "Can Temporary Wage Incentives Increase Formal Employment? Experimental Evidence from Mexico"

• October 11: Mamello Nchake (University of Stellenbosch), "The Effect of Weather Shocks on Women’s Labor Supply and the Income of Women-Headed Households in Lesotho", joint with Ramaele Moshoeshoe, Luca Tiberti

• October 4: Noam Angrist (University of Oxford, World Bank and Young 1ove), "School’s Out: Experimental Evidence on Limiting Learning Loss Using “Low-Tech” in a Pandemic"

• September 27: Asha Sundaram (University of Auckland), "Family Leave Mandates and Female Labor at U.S. Firms: Evidence from a Trade Shock"

• September 20: Kara Dimitruk (University of Stellenbosch), "Before apartheid: labor markets, political parties and institutions in 19th century South Africa"

• September 6, 2021: Justine Burns (University of Cape Town), "Does Ingroup identity matter for charitable giving?" joint with Ronelle Burger, Marisa von Fintel

• August 23, 2021: Amy Thornton (University of Cape Town), "Crime, Income and Inequality: Non-linearities under Extreme Inequality in South Africa" joint with Haroon Bhorat, Adaiah Lilenstein, Jabulile Monnakgotla, Kirsten van der Zee 

• August 2, 2021: Joeri Schasfoort (University of Cape Town), "Title: Social Learning in a Network Model of Covid-19", joint with Allan Davids, Gideon Du Rand, Co-Pierre Georg, Tina Koziol

• July 26, 2021: Dan Hamermesh (University of Texas at Austin), "Publishing Economics: How Slow? Why Slow? Is Slow Productive? Fixing Slow?"

• July 19, 2021: Rossouw Van Jaarsveld (University of Stellenbosch), "A primer in cartel dating", joint with Willem Boshoff, Maurice Bun, Maarten Pieter Schinkel

• July 12, 2021: Neryvia Pillay (University of Cape Town), “Taxpayer responsiveness to taxation: Evidence from bunching at kink points of the South African income tax schedule” 

• June 28, 2021: Martin Wittenberg (University of Cape Town), "The science, art and politics of doing social research: Some lessons from the 1993 PSLSD"

• June 21, 2021: Kevin Kotze (University of Cape Town), "Big data forecasting of South African inflation", joint with Byron Botha, Rulof Burger, Neil Rankin and Daan Steenkamp

• June 14, 2021: Tim Kohler (University of Cape Town), “COVID-19 in the context of extreme unemployment and inequality: Estimating the effects of South Africa’s national lockdown”, joint with Haroon Bhorat, Ben Stanwix, and Rob Hill

• June 7, 2021: Melissa Newham (University of Leuven), "Heterogeneous Effects of Drug Firms' Payments to Physicians", joint with Marica Valente

• May 31, 2021: Lucas Argentieri (University of North Carolina), “Government-owned Banks and Development: on Unintended Consequences of Bank Privatizations” 

• May 24, 2021: Co-Pierre Georg (University of Cape Town), "Contagious Zombies", joint with Christian Bittner, Falko Fecht

• May 17, 2021: Allan Davids (University of Cape Town), "Do firms have a preference for paying exactly zero tax?" joint with Santosh Anagol, Ben Lockwood and Tarun Ramadorai

• May 10, 2021: Lukasz Grzybowski (University of Cape Town), "Mobile phones and financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa", joint with Onkokame Mothobi, Valentin Lindlacher