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TIPS/DPRU Forum 2005: Trade and Uneven Development – Opportunities and Challenges (22)

The Effect of Minimum Wages on the Employment and Earnings of South Africa's Domestic Service Workers

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Tom Hertz
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
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…
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Risks to Global Trade and Implications for South Africa's Economy and Policy

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Jeremy Wakeford
  • 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,…
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Co-Movement Between South Africa and SADC: Is Trade a Predominant Factor?

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Alain Kabundi and Elsabe Loots
  • Countries and Regions South Africa, Southern African Development Community (SADC)
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…
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Unpacking the Nature of Demand and Supply Relationships in the Mining Capital Goods and Services Cluster: The Case of PGMs

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Marian Walker
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
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)…
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An Augmented Gravity Model of South Africa's Exports of Transport Equipments and Machineries

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Moses Sichei, Jean Luc Erero and Tewodros Gebreselassie
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
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…
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Growth, Learning, Entry and Exit among African Exporters

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Neil Rankin, Mans Soderbom and Francis Teal
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
This paper investigates whether African manufacturing exporters are more productive than non-exporters and whether these productivity differences precede entry into the export market. We find at expoters are more productive but that productivity does not matter for entry into t export market - suggesting that learning by exporting is important.…
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The Concentration Tendencies of SADC's Manufacturing Industries with regard to South Africa: 1970

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Simon Hess
  • Countries and Regions South Africa, Southern African Development Community (SADC)
The current implementation of a free trade area in SADC has given rise to concerns that the present location of industry in the region will be adversely affected. Specifically, many of the smaller and less-developed countries fear that this change will result in a loss of their industry towards the…
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Exchange Rate Volatility and Exports in South Africa

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) K.R. Todani and T.V. Munyama
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
This paper examines the characteristics of short-term fluctuations/volatility of the South African exchange rate and investigates whether this volatility has affected the South Africa's exports flows. In particular the paper investigates the impact of exchange rate volatility on aggregate South African exports flows to the rest of the world, as…
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Who Replies in Brackets and What are the Implications for Earnings Estimates? An Analysis of Earnings Data from South Africa

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Dorrit Posel and Daniela Casale
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
In household surveys, earnings data typically can be reported as point values, in brackets or as 'missing'. In this paper we consider South African household survey data that contain these three sets of responses. In particular, we examine whether there are systematic differences between the sample of the employed with…
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The Significance of Product Development to Firm Competitiveness: A Case of Plastic Product Firms in Ekurhuleni

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) L.G. Mohamed
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
Understanding firm competitiveness and product development is crucial to industrial development. The plastics sector provides a good case in which to explore these issues. The plastics sector has been one of the better performing sectors in recent years in terms of output and employment. Plastic products are increasingly replacing metal…
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Globalisation and the post MFA Environment: The Competitive Dynamics and Policy Responsiveness of the Clothing Industry in Madagascar

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Mike Morris and Leanne Sedowski
  • Countries and Regions Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa)
The last few years have witnessed two major shifts in global trading and industrialisation patterns. The first is the rise of China (with the South East Asian region in tow) as the dominant force reshaping the relations between developing and developed countries as well as the competitive dynamics within the…
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The Benefit-Incidence of Tariff Liberalisation in South Africa

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Reza Daniels and Lawrence Edwards
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
This paper evaluates how tariff liberalisation affected households in South Africa over the period 1995, 2000 and 2004, focussing specifically on the incidence of tariffs over the expenditure distribution. Results suggest that trade liberalisation has reduced the tariff burden for households across the expenditure distribution, implying significant welfare improvement to…
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An Overview of the Impact of the Commodity Price Boom on the South African Economy

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Ryan Hawthorne, Reena Das Nair and Keith Bowen
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
Between January 2002 and July 2005, the South African exchange rate has appreciated by more than 30 per cent. At the same time, there has been widespread news coverage of the decline in several manufacturing sectors, notably clothing and textiles. Over the same period, commodity prices have risen substantially. The…
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Trends in Poverty and Inequality since the Political Transition

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Servaas van der Berg, Ronelle Burger, Rulof Burger, Megan Louw and Derek Yu
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
Using a constructed data series and another data series based on AMPS (the All Media and Products surveys), this paper explores trends in poverty and income distribution over the post-transition period. To steer clear of an unduly optimistic conclusion, assumptions are chosen that would tend to show the least decline…
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Import Parity Pricing: A Competitive Constraint or a Source of Market Power?

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Geoff Parr
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
Pricing tradable goods in the domestic market at import parity is evaluated to determine whether it can be characterized as a competitive constraint on pricing, or as a source of market power. The policy of import parity pricing (IPP) is also assessed in terms of the South African Competition Act.…
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The role of development finance for industry in a restructuring seconomy; a critical reflection on the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa

  • Year 2005
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
South Africa's low investment rate has been widely recognised as both a symptom and cause of relatively poor industrial performance in the past decade. Investment is particularly important as restructuring requires the rapid growth of new activities if potential gains are to be realised, especially with a view to increasing…
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Micro-Economic Development Strategy for the Western Cape

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) D Kaplan
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
NOTE: This is an extract from the recent report of the Department of Economic Development, Western Cape Province. The first chapter sets the scene by outlining some of the challenges faced. Chapter 5 sets out the heart of the approach employed in identifying priority sectors and the broad policy approach…
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The Structure of Growth in the Western Cape Manufacturing Sector, 1970 to 1996

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) J.W. Fedderke and A.K. Fitschen
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
This paper examines growth patterns in the Western Cape over the 1970-1996 period by means of primal growth accounting decompositions. Evidence by magisterial district, by statistical region and by SIC 3-digit manufacturing sector is presented. We find that the Western Cape differs from national growth patterns. Manufacturing in the Western…
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The Role of Local Government in Promoting Trade

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Amiena Bayat and Zunaid Moolla
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
Trade and industrial policies are generally viewed from the vantage point of national government. Hence the emphasis on the type of trade regime that should be pursued (tariffs, subsidies, etc), the state of the current account, the exchange rate and geo-political factors (globalisation, power blocs and regional associations). While the…
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Trade, Technology and Wage Inequality in the South African Manufacturing Sectors

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Johannes Fedderke;Yongcheol Shin
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
This paper advances on previous work on the effects of trade and technical change on labour markets within the framework of Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory. First, we employ dynamic heterogeneous panel estimation techniques not previously used in thiscontext, which separate Heckscher-Ohlin-based long run relationships from short run dynamics that are heterogeneous…
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Industrial Development and Industrial Finance in Brazil and South Africa: Comparative assessment

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Jorge Maia;Lumkile Mondi; Simon Roberts
  • Countries and Regions Mercosur (Common Market of the South), South Africa
Brazil and South Africa share similar development challenges. Both have very unequal income distributions, both have a strong resource orientation underpinning their industrial development trajectory, and both have undergone a sharp liberalisation and opening up of their economies in the past decade. At the same time, both countries are attempting…
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An overview of the impact of the commodity price boom on the SA economy

  • Year 2005
  • Author(s) Ryan Hawthorne;Reena Das Nair;Keith Bowen
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
Ryan Hawthorne, Reena Das Nair and Keith Bowen of Johannesburg Economics presented this paper at the TIPS/DPRU/UNU-WIDER Forum 2005. It finds that there may be reasons other than high commodity prices for the general lacklustre growth in manufacturing output, the decline in manufacturing employment and the increase in employment in…
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