In this this edition of the Trade and Industry Monitor we include a special focus by Lawrence Edwards and Tijl van de Winkel of the School of Economics, UCT, who analyse the impact of trade liberalisation on the pricing behaviour of SA industries. In our Focus on Data section, we examine current bilateral trade patterns between SA and China, and the question of which goods SA should target in the event of Free Trade Area negotiations. Looking to the African continent, our next article -More and Fairer Trade for Africa, released by the Commission for Africa - further examines the…

In April of this year, the World Bank, in collaboration with TIPS and the Witwatersrand University, hosted a seminar on the implica-tions of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) for Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA). The seminar reported on the findings of a major international research project investigating the market, welfare and poverty impacts of a potential DDA. Building on the seminar discussions, this edition of the Trade & Industry Monitor examines the extent to which various regions, and the world as a whole, could gain from multilateral trade reform over the next decade.

Economists generally see industrial policy as a very broad concept incorporating a range of other mainly but not exclusively, economic policies as part of the industrial policy toolbox. Trade and competition policy are at least at a theoretical level firmly part of this. However in practice, in the cut and thrust of trade negotiations, and the legalese of merger filings this is often forgotten. In this edition of the Monitor we feature a number of articles which remind us of the often profound implications which trade and competition policy can have for industrial development. In the article by Xavier Carim…

In this edition of the Trade & Industry Monitor we focus on the impact of the global economy on developing countries, particularly in terms of the measures and responses available to them in the industrial and trade policy arenas. In our Special Focus article, Ha-Joon Chang notes that the changing global environment has put new restrictions on the conduct of industrial policy. Especially for developing countries, the available policy space is constantly under pressure. However, for Chang this does not spell the end of industrial policy; it only means that countries need to be more creative in policy design and…

The revision process that was carried out on the 2006 Southern African trade data has been completed. The 2006 data (for most of the SADC member states) are back online - please visit the database at http://www.sadctrade.org/tradedata. If you have questions around the Southern African trade database, please contact Mmatlou Kalaba.

�Â� The successful and rapid progression of the Eastern and Southern African integration process needs to be underpinned by comprehensive expertise from the region, including government, the private sector, non-governmental organisations and academics. Regional integration has become increasingly important and affects many countries worldwide. The importance of regional integration for…

In this edition of the Monitor, we focused on five thematic areas: Trade Liberalisation; Development and Poverty Reduction; Industrial Policy; South Africa's Growth Trajectory; and Sector Strategies

The UNCTAD Virtual Institute (VI) builds capacity in developing and least developed countries by providing universities and research institutions with tools to enhance their knowledge and expertise in trade, investment and development issues. In cooperation with the Division on Africa and the Least Developed Countries and the Trade Analysis Branch…

The Government of South Africa apparently is clear about its goals for the reform of public enterprises. In his 2001 Budget Speech (RSA, 2001a, p.1), the Minister of Public Enterprises explains ?restructuring? as the generic term taken to represent the set of strategies employed by the state to ensure that…

At the end of the 1960s, after a half century of rapid industrialisation, South Africa had a relatively advanced and diversified manufacturing sector. By the standards of today's advanced industrial countries, which feature in Gerschenkron's (1952) seminal analysis, South Africa was a very late industrialiser, but it was a very…

Studies on the South African labour market have almost exclusively focused on the factors determining and shaping the current and future supply of labour in the country. This has, in the main, been driven by the availability of national data sets that have been limited essentially to household surveys produced…

This paper examines the relation between the institutional structures of advanced OECD countries and the comparative growth and investment of 27 industries in those countries over the period 1970 to 1995. The underlying thesis that the paper examines is that there is a matching between the institutional structures of countries…

In the 1980s the UK (and Chile) began the processes of privatizing and restructuring stateowned enterprises, liberalizing the markets in which they operated and regulating their conduct. Since then many countries at all levels of development have implemented their own programmes of regulatory reform. Almost two decades after the process…

Two years ago, the Internet was seen as changing the world. The most prestigious business schools were rushing to create concentrations in E-commerce, and the conjunction of the entrepreneur (preferably with a Stanford degree) with the venture capitalist was heralded as the key to the "new economy", in which, according…

This paper will evaluate the micro-finance sector in South Africa, its scope and development, and its role in the financial sector and the economy more generally. It is informed by the premise that households and institutions save and invest independently, and that the financial system's role is to intermediate between…

The South African Electricity Supply Industry (ESI) is dominated by a state-owned and vertically integrated utility, Eskom, which ranks seventh in the world in terms of size and electricity sales. It supplies about 96% of South Africa's electricity requirements which equals more than half of the electricity generated on the…

Since the early 1980s South Africa's trade policy regime has shifted from one of import substitution towards one of export orientation. This shift has been encouraged by trade liberalisation which accelerated in 1994 with tariff liberalisation, export orientation policies that ranged from direct support (GEIS) to marketing related support, and…

This paper examines whether endogenous growth processes can be found in middle income country contexts. Estimation proceeds by means of dynamic heterogeneous panel analysis. Empirical evidence finds in favour of both knowledge spill-over effects, and of positive impacts on total factor productivty growth by Schumpeterian innovative activity. A crucial finding…

The Director of Economic Rise Consulting, Shirley Robinson is an economist advising on public policy concerns, primarily targeted towards urban and regional economic development. She is also working part-time as a technical assistant for National Treasury’s Technical Assistant Unit, Economic Development and International Relaitons portfolio. Shirley holds a master's degree in Business Science (Economics) from the University of Cape Town and has worked extensively in the public sector with the National Treasury's budget team, the Western Cape Provincial Treasury and Premier's Office, as well as in the non-governmental sector, with the Institute for Democracy in South Africa's Budget Information Service.…