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Trade and Industry

Trade and Industry (257)

Industrial policy forms the core of TIPS’s work. In this context, TIPS supports the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti), the Departmenet of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and several other departments and stakeholders with targeted studies to support policy development for industrial and trade policy as well as manufacturing growth.

TIPS undertakes research, among others, into national and regional sectors, value chains and clusters; the impact of state and private institutions on manufacturing  growth and diversification; the barriers to entry to small and medium enterprise in manufacturing; the extent and nature of innovation; and the impact of manufacturing on broader economic growth and development, income distribution and job creation.

Trade research has also been an important research area of TIPS since its establishment.  TIPS has looked at many different aspects of international trade, including country studies, trade policy, export development and the relationship between trade and industrial policy. 

See past projects

Thursday, 15 June 2000

FTAs with India and Brazil: An Initial Analysis

  • Year 2000
  • Organisation TIPS
  • Author(s) Matthew Stern; Christopher Stevens
  • Countries and Regions Brazil, India
The purpose of this report is to launch a debate on the proposed free trade agreements (FTAs) with Brazil and India by providing some preliminary analysis. Two different but complementary research methodologies have been employed, each of which provides a different perspective on the possible impact of these agreements.
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Published in SADC Trade Development
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Thursday, 15 June 2000

Competition and Market Structure in the Plastics Sector: A Preliminary Analysis

  • Year 2000
  • Organisation WITS
  • Author(s) Chris Malikane; Simon Roberts
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
The South African Competition Act of 1998, implemented on 1 September 1999, establishes a range of criteria for evaluating mergers and company practices that are deemed to harm economic efficiency, among other objectives. In particular, the Act prohibits a range of practices if the firm is ‘dominant’, including charging an…
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Published in Trade & Growth Dynamics
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Thursday, 15 June 2000

Determinants Of Investment In South Africa: A Sectoral Approach

  • Year 2000
  • Organisation TIPS
  • Author(s) TIPS
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
Low investment levels in the South African economy are consistently identified as the principal factor behind suboptimal growth rates. Despite the increasing recognition of the importance of investment there is relatively little analytical research available in South Africa on the determinants of investment behaviour, specifically at the sectoral level. It…
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Published in Trade & Growth Dynamics
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Thursday, 15 June 2000

Production and Technology Changes, Restructuring, and Employment in the Plastics Sector

  • Year 2000
  • Organisation TIPS
  • Author(s) Chris Malikane; Simon Roberts
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
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…
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Published in Trade & Growth Dynamics
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Thursday, 15 June 2000

South Africa's International Cost Competitiveness

  • Year 2000
  • Organisation TIPS
  • Author(s) Stephen Golub
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
The purpose of this paper is to assess South Africa’s international price and cost competitiveness, particularly with regard to labor costs, and to examine the quantitative relationships between South African cost competitiveness and tradeperformance. South African export and investment performance improved markedly during the 1990s, particularly the post-1994 period, coinciding…
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Published in Trade & Growth Dynamics
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Saturday, 01 January 2000

A Critical Analysis of the Regional Trade Model for South Africa (RTMSA): Implications for Future Research

  • Year 2000
  • Organisation TIPS
  • Author(s) Nicolette Cattaneo
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
The studies of Evans (1996, 1997a,b) appear to be the most analytically ambitious attempts to address, empirically, the question of the economic desirability of a southern African free trade area (FTA).  Evans (1996) is apparently the only serious study available to date which gives detailed sectoral effects of the formation…
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Published in SADC Trade Development
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Saturday, 01 January 2000

Adopting the Market for Skill Formation: Two Contrasting Approaches

  • Year 2000
  • Organisation TIPS
  • Author(s) David Ashton; Johnny Sung
The aim of this paper is to explore some of the major differences in the ways in which governments influence the process of skill formation. In particular, we focus on the ways in which governments use the market as a means of delivering the skills required for economic growth. We…
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Published in Trade & Growth Dynamics
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Wednesday, 01 December 1999

The Impact of Trade and Structural Changes on Sectoral Employment in South Africa

  • Year 1999
  • Organisation DPRU
  • Author(s) Haroon Bhorat
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
This paper describes formal employment trends in the South African economy since 1970, through using both survey and time-series data. In addition, the study tries to understand the forces that have shaped these employment trends. The descriptive statistics reveal that the primary sectors have shed close to 1.5 million jobs…
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Published in SADC Trade Development
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Tuesday, 15 June 1999

Competitiveness, International Trade and Finance in a Mineral-Rich Economy: The Case of South Africa

  • Year 1999
  • Organisation IDRC
  • Author(s) Trevor Bell; Greg Farrell; Rashad Cassim
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
The aim of this paper is to consider the relationship between competitiveness, international trade and financial factors in the South African economy. The term ‘competitiveness’ is used here in two closely related, but distinctly different, senses. One of these refers to a country’s ability ‘to realise central economic policy goals,…
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Published in SADC Trade Development
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Tuesday, 15 June 1999

Examining the Cost of Services Protection in a Developing Country: The Case of South Africa

  • Year 1999
  • Organisation UCT
  • Author(s) James Hodge
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
In the lead-up to the next round of WTO talks, some commentators have argued that developing countries should liberalise their service industries for their own benefit and not just in response to industrial country demands. This paper critically explores this position for the case of South Africa. It finds that…
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Published in Trade & Growth Dynamics
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Tuesday, 01 December 1998

A Preliminary Analysis of the Impact of Trade Liberalisation on Manufacturing

  • Year 1998
  • Organisation University of London
  • Author(s) Simon Roberts
This study undertakes a preliminary analysis of changes in manufacturing in light of the ongoing trade liberalisation measures introduced in the 1990s. The case for trade liberalisation rests on firms responding to the increased incentive to export, leading to more efficient use of resources, with increased productivity, competition and investment.…
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Published in Trade & Growth Dynamics
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Tuesday, 01 December 1998

Free Trade with Europe - the Winners and Losers: The Results of the SMART Simulation

  • Year 1998
  • Organisation UNCTAD; TIPS
  • Author(s) Ethel Teljeur
  • Countries and Regions European Union (EU), South Africa
This study projects the impact of the proposed free trade area (FTA) between South Africa and the European Union on the bilateral trade flows between the two. The South African and European respective proposals, as formulated in 1996, served as a basis. The results are evaluated both at an aggregate…
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Published in SADC Trade Development
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Tuesday, 01 December 1998

South African Trades in High Technology Products

  • Year 1998
  • Author(s) James Hodge
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
The production of and trade in high technology products has always been seen to be important for both developed and developing countries. For developed nations these products are a source of significant exports, off-setting their loss of competitiveness in traditional low technology products. For developing nations, mastery of these products…
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Published in Trade & Growth Dynamics
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Monday, 01 December 1997

Evaluating the Current Industrial Policy of South Africa

  • Year 1997
  • Organisation University of Cambridge
  • Author(s) Ha-Joon Chang
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
This paper looks at some of the relevant and critical issues facing the South African government in devising an industrial policy. It provides an overview of some of the key theoretical issues in industrial policy and looks at some of the critical choices facing South Africa with reference to the…
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Published in Trade & Growth Dynamics
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Monday, 01 December 1997

Towards an Understanding of World and South African Trade in Services

  • Year 1997
  • Organisation DPRU
  • Author(s) James Hodge
The Services sector has become one of the most important sectors in the South African economy as it has grown double the rate of manufacturing over the last three decades. There is a noticeable absence of serious economic analysis on the importance of the South African Services sector both to…
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Published in Trade & Growth Dynamics
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Sunday, 15 June 1997

Some Implications of the SADC Trade Protocol

  • Year 1997
  • Organisation Overseas Development Institute
  • Author(s) S Page
  • Countries and Regions Southern African Development Community (SADC)
As South Africa commits itself to entering a free-trade agreement with the SADC community a number of important issues arise. These range from the likely economic impact of a FTA on member countries, the legal political and regulatory problems and others. This paper represents the first attempt to explain these…
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Published in Trade and Industry
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Sunday, 15 June 1997

Trade in Services Workshop, CAPAS Regional Meetings

  • Year 1997
  • Organisation TIPS
  • Author(s) CAPAS Regional Meetings
  • Countries and Regions South Africa
A regional meeting to launch the work programme of CAPAS Phase III was held at Helderfontein Estate in Johannesburg on 27-29 November 1997. The meeting was organised jointly by the Trade and Industrial Policy Secretariat (TIPS) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) of South Africa with support from…
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Published in Trade & Growth Dynamics
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