Session 1B: The Financial Crisis: Global and Regional Impacts"

South Africa has historically been ranked as one of the most unequal societies in the world, and while the country has experienced sustained positive economic growth since 1994, the impact of this growth on poverty, and particularly inequality, has been disappointing. Analysis using data from the 1995 and 2000 Income and Expenditure Surveys…"

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) a third of the global workforce is either unemployed or underemployed barely eking out a living through informal work; selfemployment or as wage workers involved in precarious employment. International competitive pressures have led to a restructuring of organizations toward decentralized production networks and employment relationships. A…"

The systematic failure of post-settlement support in South African land reform has been identified as a major contributing variable to the approximated 50 percent failure rate  of new land reform projects.  In spite of this dismal record, government increasingly finds itself under immense political pressure to speed up land reform efforts in order…"

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South Africa has a peculiar industrial structure given its factor endowments: production is capital intensive in sectors and concentrated in capital intensive sectors despite an abundance of unskilled labour. Part of the reason for this phenomenon lies in the development process of South African industry: it grew around the mining sector and its…"

The paper will explore the assumptions and analysis informing the drafting of a second economy strategy, a process that has been underway under the auspices of The Second Economy Strategy Project: an initiative of the Presidency, based at TIPS. The paper will argue that the concept of 'the second economy' should be seen…"

Democracy opened the door for transformation in South Africa. In the past decade, various laws, policies and programmes have been implemented with the aim of putting into effect the principles of the new South African Constitution and the Bill of Rights, with the aim of improving the lives of the people of South…"

Colonialism and the deleterious impact of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and now globalisation. Some parts of postcolonial Africa have attempted to set up ministries of economic development. Others have concentrated on attracting on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) whilst some others have early on realised that the state and private capital should work hand…"

Although the 1994 elections concern redress, social justice and reconciliation, many would consider that these objectives will never be achieved if no economic and social development affects the previously disadvantaged. Development has many dimensions (especially if considered as addressing the injustices of the past) among which the increase of low income and low…"

The question that concerns this paper is: how can greater security of tenure increase access to economic opportunities for the poor? Because of the relationship of tenure to property, the primary concern of this paper becomes: how secure access to property can increase economic opportunities for the poor. Rephrased, the concern of this…"

In the 1980s, aquaculture, or fish farming, was in its infancy, globally. Today, it accounts for close to 50 million tons annually, making up nearly half of all fish products consumed. Of this, Africa has a 1% market share and South Africa accounts for about 1% of the African slice. China and Chile…"

Description In his paper, Albert Berry - professor of economics and director of the Latin American programme at the Centre for International Studies of the University of Toronto - identifies the impacts of globalisation and liberalisation on inequality. He finds that data deficiencies and a lack of in-depth analysis of inequality, poverty and…"

This paper integrates two mechanisms of economic growth barriers to international spill-overs and skill-biased effects on the income distribution. South Africa (SA) is an interesting case study because of dramatic changes in international barriers over time and policy focus to productivity and distribution. Barriers affect the balance between innovation and adoption in the…"

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 regulations came into…"

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 earnings reported as…"

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 consumers in the…"

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 in poverty. Whilst…"

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 across sectors. Second,…"

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 to chart a…"