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22 October 2008
Reviewing 15 years of resource-poor small-scale agriculture in South Africa: is there any way forward?
This paper will review the attempts at fostering resource poor small-scale agricultural development in South Africa from 1994 to the present. Based on the lack of a concerted policy for support and development of this group of farmers and given the incomplete datasets about this group a number an attempt…
- Year 2008
- Organisation Senior Research Manager, Centre for Employment, Poverty and Growth, HSRC.
- Author(s) Tim Hart
- Countries and Regions South Africa
Although the 1994 elections concern redress, social justice and reconciliation, many would consider that these objectives will never be achieved if no economic and social development affects the previously disadvantaged. Development has many dimensions (especially if considered as addressing the injustices of the past) among which the increase of low…
- Year 2008
- Organisation University of Pretoria
- Author(s) Ward Anseeuw;Ntombifuthi Mathebula
- Countries and Regions South Africa
22 October 2008
Is water shedding next?
South Africa is in the grip of an electricity crisis marked by a euphemism known as load shedding. The demand for electricity has grown to the point that the supply reserve margin is often under threat, necessitating the electricity supplier to cut supply to some areas, or to shed load.…
- Year 2008
- Organisation University of Pretoria
- Author(s) James Blignaut;Jan van Heerden
- Countries and Regions South Africa
22 October 2008
Quasi-formalisation of informal land markets in communal areas to facilitate increased arable production: a case study of Thaba Nchu
Most of the communal arable lands in the former homeland areas are currently either underutilized or not utilized at all. Among some of the reasons given is the absence of 'land markets' owing to the communal nature of the rights bestowed on the owners/users of the land. This paper aims…
- Year 2008
- Author(s) Mompati N. Baiphethi; Siyabulela Manona;M.F. Viljoen;G. Kundhlande
- Countries and Regions South Africa
The question that concerns this paper is: how can greater security of tenure increase access to economic opportunities for the poor? Because of the relationship of tenure to property, the primary concern of this paper becomes: how secure access to property can increase economic opportunities for the poor. Rephrased, the…
- Year 2008
- Organisation Development Works and Leap
- Author(s) Lauren Royston
- Countries and Regions South Africa
22 October 2008
The role of industrial policy and the minerals-energy complex in the decline of South African textiles and clothing
South African manufacturing has experienced a slow overall decline despite adopting a range of recommended economic policies from protectionism and active state support in the period preceding political change (1994) followed by aggressive liberalisation and more free access to markets thereafter. Alongside interfering industrial policies, the decline has also been…
- Year 2008
- Organisation SOAS, University of London
- Author(s) Lotta Takala
- Countries and Regions South Africa
22 October 2008
Impact of clustering on innovation, entrepreneurship and organisation of SMEs in transition economies
The paper presents significant new insights for Policy Makers, Practitioners, Educators, and Researchers into the socio-economy of agglomerated SMEs in developing country context. Using mixed methods of inquiry and concurrent triangulation approach this paper profiles the socio-economy of the internationally competitive textile industry cluster of Faisalabad in Pakistan to establish…
- Year 2008
- Organisation Lahore University of Management Sciences
- Author(s) Faheem ul Islam
- Countries and Regions South Africa
23 October 2008
Territorial competitiveness and development policy
There are fundamental links between academic treatments of 'economic development' and of the popular policy discourse of 'competitiveness'. Productivity-focused analyses of competitiveness are inherently related to market-centric analyses of development that have economic growth as their objective. However, a consensus is emerging on the need for broader conceptions of economic…
- Year 2008
- Organisation Orkestra, Basque Institute of Competitiveness
- Author(s) James Wilson
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a relationship between export volumes and exchange rate volatility exists as suggested in the ASGISA document. It goes about this by first investigating the theoretical channels that predict the relationship between export volumes and exchange rate volatility. The theoretical prediction though,…
- Year 2008
- Organisation South African Reserve Bank
- Author(s) Siobhan Redford
- Countries and Regions South Africa
23 October 2008
Reducing exchange rate volatility and supporting competitiveness
In this paper we analyze the relationships between exchange rates, inflation and competitiveness. We show that over the 1994-2006 sample period real exchange rate depreciations did not improve the trade balance and therefore had no positive effect on growth. One reason is that SA exports are priced to market (PTM…
- Year 2008
- Organisation University of Pretoria and Tilburg University
- Author(s) E. Schaling
- Countries and Regions South Africa
23 October 2008
Inflation targeting and inflation performance in South Africa
Formal inflation targeting has been adopted as the monetary policy framework in South Africa since February 2000. Prior to that (since about 1990), the South African Reserve Bank has pursued implicit inflation targeting with no officially announced inflation target. Official inflation targeting frameworks are based on the premise that inflation…
- Year 2008
- Organisation University of the Free State
- Author(s) M. Marinkov;P. Burger
- Countries and Regions South Africa
23 October 2008
Why are some exchange rates more volatile than others? evidence from transition economies
To better understand why some currencies are more volatile than others, this paper considers the cross-country determinants of exchange rate volatility for a set of middle-income countries. Overall, the paper finds that higher levels of reserves reduce volatility, and it is estimated that an appropriate level of reserves is approximately…
- Year 2008
- Organisation University of Cape Town and Deloitte Consulting
- Author(s) Chandana Kularatne; Roy Haveman
- Countries and Regions South Africa
23 October 2008
Estimating the relationship between commodity prices and the real exchange rate of the rand
The key objective of this paper is to construct a commodity export price series for South Africa (incorporating a wider range of commodities than those considered in the empirical literature on South Africa to date) and to determine its influence on real exchange rate movements in South Africa. Existing models…
- Year 2008
- Organisation South African Reserve Bank
- Author(s) L. Rangasamy;J. Jakoet
- Countries and Regions South Africa
The ASGISA document identifies several binding constraints preventing South Africa from achieving elevated levels of economic growth (Republic of South Africa, 2006). This paper takes an evolutionary perspective to consider whether the proposed policy interventions will address what is, arguably, a fundamental growth constraint: the current inability of the economic…
- Year 2008
- Organisation University of Stellenbosch
- Author(s) Rachel Jafta;Willem Boshoff
- Countries and Regions South Africa
23 October 2008
Trends and transitions in labour market outcomes among adults enrolled in the Free State's public sector ARV treatment programme
The adverse micro- and macroeconomic impacts of the HIV and AIDS epidemic is relatively well documented. With the advent of the free provision of antiretroviral treatment (ART) in the public sector, the focus in research on the economics of HIV and AIDS has shifted toward determining how ART may ameliorate…
- Year 2008
- Organisation University of Free State
- Author(s) Frikkie Booysen
- Countries and Regions South Africa
23 October 2008
Work allocation forms: substitution between full-time, part-time and contracted labour in the creative industries
One of the most pervasive trends in contemporary South African business is the substitution of alternative work forms for full-time, permanent employment. Part-time work and external contracting are used extensively by firms, ostensibly to adjust to altering work conditions. However, relatively little is understood about the process, context and contingencies…
- Year 2008
- Organisation University of the Witwatersrand
- Author(s) Gregory John Lee;Ralitza Dobreva
- Countries and Regions South Africa
24 October 2008
Infrastructure investment-led policy scenarios for South Africa
The South African government has begun to speed up the delivery of infrastructure. This policy shift is in line with its aim to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014, achievable if the economy grows at an average rate of 6 per cent by 2010. The government was able to demonstrate…
- Year 2008
- Organisation Development Bank of Southern Africa
- Author(s) Marié Kirsten;Glynn Davies
- Countries and Regions South Africa
The making of a 'new' South Africa has not been without its challenges. After the political miracle of 1994, political actors, policy-makers and academics had to transform repressive and apartheid predatory political machinery into a functional and inclusive and democratised polity. Inebriated by the euphoria of a newly found democracy,…
- Year 2008
- Organisation Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
- Author(s) Eric Makoni
- Countries and Regions South Africa
South Africa has a peculiar industrial structure given its factor endowments: production is capital intensive in sectors and concentrated in capital intensive sectors despite an abundance of unskilled labour. Part of the reason for this phenomenon lies in the development process of South African industry: it grew around the mining…
- Year 2008
- Organisation Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
- Author(s) Oliver Schwank;Michael Wild
- Countries and Regions South Africa
24 October 2008
Zoning in on South Africa's Industrial Development Zones
Industrial Development Zones (IDZs) have been and still are important vehicles used by developing countries to facilitate investments, create jobs and boost exports. The attractiveness of IDZs is characterized primarily by their association with the adjacent location of an airport or port, good basic infrastructure and duty-free imports of production-related…
- Year 2008
- Organisation University of KwaZulu-Natal
- Author(s) Vanessa Tang
- Countries and Regions South Africa