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.…

Explaining the Growth Absence: reviewing the evidence that can account for the poor growth performance of the South African economy South Africa's democratic transition now lies close to a decade in the past. The transition carried with it much by way of hopes in terms of a greater access by…

In recent years, dozens of OECD and non-OECD countries have followed the United States in establishing strong autonomous regulatory institutions empowered with regulatory instruments and financial independence. Flexibility and agility are required to implement ad hoc policies through regulations, resolutions, and decrees. Their special status also responds to the need…

Significant changes have taken place in the distribution stage of the pharmaceutical supply chain in the South Africa during the past decade. These have led to a series of complaints and applications for interim relief to the competition authorities. The Competition Tribunal has delivered some judgements that have been in…

The South African financial sector, described here as the banking, insurance and securities industries, is a sophisticated enclave within widespread financial exclusion. The financial sector is generally regarded as stable and well regulated; indeed it is to the latter that the robustness of the sector has been attributed, in the…

The South African telecommunications sector began its liberalisation path in the early 1990s with the opening of the VANS, customer premises equipment and mobile telephony sectors. However, for fixed line services the government opted for selling an equity stake to a foreign consortium and granting the incumbent an exclusive monopoly…

The IT revolution has allowed techniques that were once the preserve of a handful of leading theoreticians to become part of the practical economist's everyday toolkit. CGE modelling is one of a number of approaches to economy-wide analysis that have become accessible and practicable as data- and computer-based techniques have…