This paper develops a theoretical macro-economic model that links social infrastructure investment, taxation, and wages to income determination and job creation. The framework incorporates productivity effects, a fiscal budget constraint, and the public good nature of social infrastructure investment and wages, identifying a multiple equilibrium problem with the possibility of…

It is widely agreed that technological learning and innovation are essential features of successful economic development. Yet achieving commercial success through technological innovation is notoriously difficult. Sophisticated entrepreneurial, managerial and organisational capabilities are at least as important as technical capabilities for achieving and sustaining this. Policy decisions around innovation expenditure…

The paper utilises data from a survey of plastics firms and six firm case studies to examine the relationships between production and technology changes, and employment. The analysis examines associations between different factors influencing firms in making such changes and firm performance. These factors include trade liberalisation and the export…

In this paper, we report on the preliminary results from an analysis of the macro impact of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. We have constructed an economywide simulation model that embodies the important structural features of the South African economy, into which we have added major impact channels of the HIV/AIDS…

This paper examines the gender dimensions of the growth in informal and flexible work in South Africa and the government's policy response to this. The paper outlines the growth in informal and flexible work practices, and as illustrative examples, analyses how trade and industrial policies and labour market policies are…

Six years into South Africa's fledgling democracy one is prompted to ask: what has been achieved, if anything? In this paper, I will attempt to provide some answers, if tentative, concerning economic mobility as it pertains to labour markets in KwaZulu-Natal using the KwaZulu Income Dynamics Study (KIDS) data. To…

There is a line in the works of an ancient poet that reads ‘The fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing’2. Scholars have differed on the exact meaning of these dark words. Taken figuratively, these words provide a comparison of the deepest differences that divide…

The Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) programme has been in existence since 1995, with the primary aims of generating investment projects in key economic sectors in specific areas of the country thereby increasing employment in these sectors and areas. The key objective of the paper is to provide an assessment of…

The relationship between the size of an enterprise and other enterprise dynamics seems ambiguous. This paper highlights critical policy and research questions, with specific reference to the links between enterprise size, enterprise growth and the propensity to export. Preliminary findings suggest that the prevalence of some systematic gaps in size-class…

There continues to be considerable concern that the expansion of trade with developing countries (hereafter South) is lowering the relative wage of unskilled labour in developed countries (hereafter North). The issue of income divergence in the North is highlighted by the experience of the U.S., where a marked decline in…

A key component of labour market policy debate in South Africa, has been around the role of wages in either hindering employment creation, or conversely as a tool for reducing poverty and acting as a catalyst for aggregate demand growth. This debate has come to the fore more recently with…