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The current phase of globalisation, from the mid-1980s to the present, has been characterised by farreaching changes in the global trading system. There have been differential economic gains from participation in the global economy, particularly a) between developed and developing…
Published in
Centre for Real Economy Study (Crest)
01 December 2004
Reinventing Industrial Strategy: The Role of Government Policy in Building Industrial Competitiveness
As liberalization and globalization gather pace, concern with industrial competitiveness is growing, not just in developing countries but also in mature industrial ones. But it is the former that face the most intense competitive pressures: many find that their enterprises…
Published in
Centre for Real Economy Study (Crest)
01 December 2004
Productivity in SA: Friend or Fiend?
Today in South Africa we are witnessing changes that are remaking the country. These changes are in the social, economic and political spheres. Under its democratic government, South Africa committed itself to the principles of free-market economy nearly a decade…
Published in
Centre for Real Economy Study (Crest)
01 December 2004
The Role for Competition Policy in Economic Development: The South African Experience
Competition policy is part of the new international orthodoxy in economic policy and, at the same time, was viewed in South Africa as a crucial element of economic transformation. This article reviews the role of competition policy in economic development…
Published in
Centre for Real Economy Study (Crest)
15 June 2004
A Strategic Assessment of the South African Motor Vehicle, Parts and Accessories sector
This strategy document endeavours to analyse the South African automotive assembly and components industry's major market and production trends and dynamics as a mechanism for identifying current industry constraints and opportunities/challenges. It is comprised of six sections. Section 1 provides…
Published in
Trade & Growth Dynamics
15 June 2004
Creating Employment and Economic Wealth Through Developing the South African BPO&O sector
Business process outsourcing and offshoring (BPO&O) is a major global trend, with a significant positive impact in developing countries that have the required skills, cost advantage and infrastructure. Over the next 4-5 years, a window of opportunity exists for South…
Published in
Trade & Growth Dynamics
01 December 2005
Working Paper 1 - 2005: The Market Disciplining Effects of Trade Liberalisation and Regional Import Penetration on Manufacturing In South Africa
Since the mid-1990s, South Africa has made considerable progress in opening ups its trade regime. In 1994 South Africa committed itself to reducing and simplifying its tariff levels and structure in accordance with it offer under the GATT Uruguay Round.…
Published in
SADC Trade Development
01 December 2005
Working Paper 2 - 2005: Tourism SMMEs in South Africa: A Case for Separate Policy Development?
One of the key issues that has been raised in terms of the analysis of small enterprise (SMME) support programmes in South Africa is that often support initiatives have been in the form of 'generic' packages that overlook the specificities…
Published in
Small Enterprise Development
The food processing sector is widely regarded as having the potential to generate economic growth, entrepreneurial opportunities and employment (FAO, 1997; CIAT, 2002; Lambert, 2001; McCormick and Atieno, 2002). In developing countries the interest in agro-processing is associated with its…
Published in
Small Enterprise Development
As international tariffs are being reduced increased attention is being given to the role of non-tariff measures in impeding trade flows. The working definition of NTMs used in this report is 'government measures other than tariffs that restrict trade flows'.…
Published in
SADC Trade Development
The barrier model of productivity growth suggests that individual country productivity is related to the world technology frontier disturbed by national barriers. We offer a country study of the barrier model, exploiting the dramatic changes in the linkages to the…
Published in
Centre for Real Economy Study (Crest)
01 December 2005
Working Paper 5 - 2005: Ramsey Model of Barriers to Growth and Skill-Biased Income Distribution in South Africa
This paper integrates two mechanisms of economic growth barriers to international spill-overs and skill-biased effects on the income distribution. South Africa (SA) is an interesting case study because of dramatic changes in international barriers over time and policy focus to…
Published in
Centre for Real Economy Study (Crest)
From a policy perspective, employment depends on both economic growth and the labour absorption capacity of the economy. Policy must target both of these. Higher growth rates can be achieved through productivity improvements (technology, industry restructuring, improved know-how, etc.) and/or growth in domestic or foreign market demand. Higher growth rates…
- Year 2003
- Author(s) Miriam Altman
- Countries and Regions South Africa
High and growing rates of unemployment have been a source of great frustration to policy-makers. Although exports have been buoyant and the 1990s has been the first decade of sustained growth, unemployment has been rising by 2 percentage points each year. If the expanded definition is used, the rate of…
- Year 2003
- Author(s) Miriam Altman; Marina Meyer
- Countries and Regions South Africa
Since 1994, some restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has taken place in South Africa (SA), which has included elements of corporatisation and commercialisation, as well as partial privatisation. The Government has committed itself to more reform. This is an ongoing…
Published in
Centre for Real Economy Study (Crest)
13 May 2005
The Effect of Minimum Wages on the Employment and Earnings of South Africa's Domestic Service Workers
Minimum wages have been in place for South Africa's one million domestic service workers since November of 2002. Using data from seven waves of the Labour Force Survey, this paper ocuments that the real wages, average monthly earnings, and total earnings of all employed domestic workers have risen since the…
- Year 2005
- Author(s) Tom Hertz
- Countries and Regions South Africa
The past two decades have witnessed an unprecedented globalisation of trade in goods and services. This process has been driven, inter alia, by technology, ideology and the availability of relatively cheap energy. By extrapolating this trend, one may expect further integration of world markets and increasingly unhindered international trade. However,…
- Year 2005
- Author(s) Jeremy Wakeford
- Countries and Regions South Africa
This paper uses a novel dynamic factor model a la Forni et al. (2003) to investigate the impact of increasing trade on the co-movement of the business cycle between South Africa and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. The results show a moderate but increasing synchronization between South Africa and SADC…
- Year 2005
- Author(s) Alain Kabundi and Elsabe Loots
- Countries and Regions South Africa, Southern African Development Community (SADC)
South African policy makers and industrial planners are centrally concerned with identifying strategies and programmes that maximise and broaden the economic linkages that naturally arise from the need to extract, process and refine the country's mineral resources (DST, 2002; DTI, 2002). At an industry level these linkages encompass 'downstream' (beneficiation)…
- Year 2005
- Author(s) Marian Walker
- Countries and Regions South Africa
13 May 2005
An Augmented Gravity Model of South Africa's Exports of Transport Equipments and Machineries
The study applies an augmented gravity equation to South Africa's exports of motor vehicles, parts & accessories (SIC 381-383) to 76 countries over the period 1994 to 2003. The study employs a dynamic panel data model to estimate long-run and short-run coefficients. First, it is shown that it takes about…
- Year 2005
- Author(s) Moses Sichei, Jean Luc Erero and Tewodros Gebreselassie
- Countries and Regions South Africa