tipslogo2c

Annual Forum Papers

Subscribe to this RSS feed

Annual Forum Papers (440)

Manufacturing Competitiveness and Industrial Policy

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Simon Roberts
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
The government's Integrated Manufacturing Strategy identifies competitiveness as its primary focus, and value-matrices as the framework within which to assess manufacturing performance. This paper addresses these issues through two main components. The first is a review of interpretations of competitiveness and its determinants. The second is an assessment of South…
Download:
Topic:

The Impact of Trade Liberalisation on the South African Tourism Industry

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Paul Robertson
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
The tourism sector of the South African economy has been characterized by rapid growth in the mid-1990s which has levelled off more recently, and an increasing contribution to overall employment. The question now is how South Africa's negotiation process in removing barriers to the trade in services might affect the…
Download:
Topic:

The Impact of Electricity Trade on the Environment in South Africa

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) O.A. Akinboade; E.W. Niedermeier
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
In the early 1990s, about two-thirds of South Africans were without electricity, relying on dirtier and less convenient fuel such as coal. As a result, urban air is severely degraded, with health guidelines for concentration of particulate materials being exceeded. Eskom dominates the electricity market of sub-Saharan Africa generates about…
Download:
Topic:

Exchange Rate Misalignment and International Trade Competitiveness: A Cointegration Analysis for South Africa

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Samuel Asfaha; SN Huda
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
Based on Edwards' (1989) intertemporal general equilibrium model of a small open economy, this study attempts to estimate the degree of real exchange rate misalignment and its impact on the international trade competitiveness of the South African economy for the period 1985:1-2000:4. For this purpose, a one-step Engle-Granger approach and…
Download:
Topic:

Labour Demand and Trade in South Africa: A Dynamic Panel Analysis

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Alvin Birdi; Paul Dunne
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
This paper contributes to the debate over the effect of trade on the demand for labour in the manufacturing sector in South Africa. Previous work in the area has decomposed employment to find the likely contribution of trade effects, has investigated the correlation between employment and trade, and has used…
Download:
Topic:

A Firm Level Analysis of Trade, Technology and Employment in South Africa

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Lawrence Edwards
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
This paper uses two firm level surveys, the National Enterprise (NE) survey and the World Bank and Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council (GJMC) co-ordinated survey, to explore the implications of globalisation on employment in South Africa. We use the firm surveys to analyse the impact of trade liberalisation on the level…
Download:
Topic:

Competition Policy in SADC

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Trudi Hartzenberg
This paper provides an overview of the interconnectedness between trade, competition and investment in SADC, and explores the competition implications emerging therefrom. From a review of existing competition policy in SADC, key national and regional competition challenges are examined, with a view to suggesting options for regional collaboration to address…
Download:
Topic:

Consumer Demand in South Africa

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Swapna Mukhopadhyay
A major argument for trade liberalisation has been that openness increases efficiency, ensures greater market access to goods and employment, and these factors in due course raise growth rates and reduce poverty. However, it is also recognized that distribution of trade benefits among trading partners may be skewed, and that…
Topic:

Identifying South Africa's Interests in WTO Services Negotiations

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Nnzeni Netshitomboni; Matthew Stern
The paper extends simple trade analysis techniques used to evaluate barriers to goods trade to identify opportunities and barriers to South African trade in services. Using available services trade data from four of South Africa's major trading partners, under-traded service imports are identified and compared to trade restrictions listed in…
Download:
Topic:

Understanding the South African Construction Services Industry: Towards a GATS Negotiating Strategy

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Ethel Teljeur; Matthew Stern
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
The South African architectural, construction and engineering services industries have notable competitive advantages, particularly in providing basic infrastructure and particularly on the African continent. However, the sector has been in decline for over two decades, threatening the survival of those advantages. Exporters face many hurdles, ranging from corruption in Africa…
Download:
Topic:

Exchange Rate Policy and Trade Facilitation in Regional Integration Agreements: The Case of Southern African Economies

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Daniel Ndlela; Thandinkosi Ndlela
  • Countries and Regions Southern African Development Community (SADC)
The major objective of this study is to evaluate the role of exchange rate policy in determining trade flows with respect to Southern African economies. The study provides a structural analysis to the empirical strength of the influence of exchange rate movements on trade flows for small low-income countries on…
Download:
Topic:

The Challenge of Transformation within the Regulatory Environment of the Gambling Industry- The Role within the Southern African

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Linda de Vries
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
Economic empowerment reflects the challenges, the changes and the strategies of a large part of the South African population to have entry into industries, business sectors where the ownership and the skills were located in the hands of a few South Africans. The attempts of the private and public sector…
Download:
Topic:

The South African Business Cycle over the 1990s: What can we Learn?

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Pieter Laubscher
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
This paper was inspired in the first place as the author observed extraordinary resilience in the domestic real economy in the wake of not only the world recessionary conditions of 2000/1 but also the dramatic slide of the currency towards the end of 2001. As possibly the first hard evidence…
Topic:

SADC Trade: Challenges and Opportunities to the Regional Countries

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Albert Mafusire
  • Countries and Regions Southern African Development Community (SADC)
Intra-SADC trade remains very low despite the shift in the focus of the regional body from being driven mainly by political objectives to a position where economic imperatives are accorded greater weight. By calculating the revealed comparative advantage indices for the regional countries, results from this paper suggest that relative…
Download:
Topic:

SADC Rules of Origin: Undermining Regional Free Trade

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Frank Flatters
  • Countries and Regions Southern African Development Community (SADC)
SADC Member States have chosen regional integration as part of their strategy for global participation. While not a first best strategy, regionalism can complement more general trade and investment liberalization. Unfortunately the SADC Trade Protocol is seriously flawed. Back-loaded and confusingly differentiated tariff reduction schedules are well-known problems. Less clearly…
Download:
Topic:

Intra versus Inter-industry Specialisation, Labour Market Labour Market Adjustment and Poverty: Implications for Regional Integration

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Niki Cattaneo
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
Topic:

Formulas for Success? Some Options for Market Access Negotiations

  • Year 2002
  • Author(s) Joseph Francois; Will Martin
Most of the large tariff reductions achieved in multilateral trade negotiations have involved the use of tariff-cutting formulas, such as the "Swiss" formula. But the wide variations in initial tariff rates may create a demand for new approaches in the Doha Development Agenda. This paper surveys some options and examines…
Download:
Topic:

Regulatory Reform: Lessons from the UK

  • Year 2001
  • Organisation University of Oxford, department of Economics
  • Author(s) Simon Cowan
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…
Download:
Topic:

Explaining the Growth Absence: Reviewing the Evidence that can Account for the Poor Growth Performance of the South African Economy

  • Year 2001
  • Organisation ERSA, University of the Witwatersrand
  • Author(s) Johannes Fedderke
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…
Download:
Topic:

The Design and Performance of Regulatory Agencies: What can South Africa Learn from the Brazilian Experience?

  • Year 2001
  • Organisation OECD Development Centre – Paris and BNDES – Rio de...
  • Author(s) Andrea Goldstein;Jose Claudio Linhares Pires
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…
Download:
Topic:

The Determinants of Regulatory Effectiveness in Liberalised Markets Developing Country Experiences

  • Year 2001
  • Author(s) Gertrude Makaya
The past two decades have witnessed far-reaching reforms in the provision of telecommunications services. Before the 1980's, telecoms services were mainly provided by state-owned enterprises and in rare cases by private monopolies with territorial or functional licenses. The 80's saw the role of the state being increasingly changed from that…
Download:
Topic:

An Examination of the Impact of Economic Policy on Long-run Economic Growth An Application of a VECM Structure to a Middle- Income Context

  • Year 2001
  • Author(s) Martine Mariotti
The determinants of economic growth have long interested economists. A number of variables have been found to be significant, among them the private investment rate, human capital investment rates, the political stability of a country and others. An important sub-category of such determinants is policy variables. Specifically, two such variables…
Download:
Topic:

Unlocking Value in the 'New Economy': The Implications of B2B E-Commerce for South African Apparel and Automotive Component Firms

  • Year 2001
  • Organisation University of Natal, Durban
  • Author(s) Sagren Moodley;Mike Morris;Justin Barnes
The 'new economy' remains an ambiguous concept which means different things to different people (see, for example, Cohen et al. 2000; OECD, 2000a, b; Shapiro and Varian, 1999). We argue that the notion of a 'new economy' is closely tied to the economic transformations which are powered by the development…
Download:
Topic:

Capital/Skills-Intensity and Job Creation: An Analysis of Policy Options

  • Year 2001
  • Organisation Economic Policy Research Institute
  • Author(s) Michael Samson;Kenneth Mac Quene;Ingrid van Niekerk
The South African government's objectives of job creation and poverty reduction depend on the success of policies that promote the employment of unskilled labour. Over the past decade, unskilled jobs in the formal sector have been lost, while the demand for skilled capital and labour has risen. In sectors that…
Download:
Topic:

Determinants and Impact of ICT use for African SMEs: Implications for Rural South Africa

  • Year 2001
  • Organisation Center for Development Research (ZEF Bonn)
  • Author(s) Susanna Wolf
In most African countries small and medium enterprises (SME) account for a significant share of production and employment and are therefore directly connected to poverty alleviation. While in many respects the South African economy is different to that of other countries in the continent, for the poor population in the…
Download:
Topic:

Engaging the debate on privatization in South Africa: Theories, fables, facts, others

  • Year 2001
  • Organisation University of Cape Town, South Africa
  • Author(s) Melvin D. Ayogu
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…
Download:
Topic:

Where Has All the Growth Gone? South African Manufacturing Industry 1970-2000

  • Year 2001
  • Author(s) Trevor Bell; Nkosi Madula
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…
Download:
Topic:

Employment, Wages & Skills Development: Firm-Specific Effects Evidence from Two Firm Surveys in South Africa

  • Year 2001
  • Organisation University of Cape Town
  • Author(s) Haroon Bhorat;Paul Lundall
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…
Download:
Topic:

Finance, Investment and Growth

  • Year 2001
  • Organisation University College London and Saïd Business School...
  • Author(s) Wendy Carlin;Colin Mayer
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…
Download:
Topic:

Public policy towards the Internet and development

  • Year 2001
  • Organisation IDEI-GREMAQ, Université de Toulouse
  • Author(s) Jacques Cramer
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…
Download:
Topic:
Page 12 of 15