What Theory and International Experience Suggest about the Role of Manufacturing in Good Employment Growth for South Africa
Although econometric evidence is not very strong, there seems no reason to doubt that parts of the manufacturing sector have been drivers of growth in many countries. Much microeconomic evidence attests to technological progress within manufacturing and a considerable spillover to other sectors. This spillover may be direct (manufacturing produces machinery and equipment that raise…
read more >>Manufacturing Employment and Import Dependence
Prof Rob Davies assesses the potential of promoting South Africa’s manufacturing sector through reduced import dependence. He explores two versions of the argument. The first suggests that it would be beneficial to reduce the imported component of inputs into manufacturing production. Imported inputs into manufacturing rose from 13.0% of gross output in 1993 to 15.9%…
read more >>Growth, Employment and Distribution Impacts of Minerals Dependency: Four Case Studies
Cross-country evidence on the direct and indirect impacts of minerals dependency on growth suggests that the typical effect may be negative. The impact on employment and income distribution is even more likely to be adverse, since many minerals generate few jobs directly and may destroy more indirectly. Thus, countries heavily endowed with exportable natural resources…
read more >>Taking Off Into Sustained, Equitable Growth:Lessons From Successes And Failures
Berry offers an extensive set of case studies of economies that achieved sustained high growth. Chapter 1 discusses issues surrounding growth acceleration and current challenge for underperforming developing countries and the empirical record: evidence from countries that have accelerated to high sustained growth. Chapter 2 discusses the experience of Singapore and development strategy/policy prior to…
read more >>Employment Scenarios to 2024
“The South African government adopted targets of halving unemployment and poverty by 2014. Altman assembles a set of possible scenarios for 2024 for achieving that goal. The approach is to identify the decisions required to boost job creation under different economic conditions, and to set realistic expectations for how certain market-based sectors might contribute to…
read more >>Quantifying the Outsourcing of Jobs from Manufacturing to Services
There has been debate internationally and in South Africa about the extent to which a relative decline in manufacturing employment and rise in services employment can be accounted for by intersectoral outsourcing of jobs in the domestic economy. This article develops a new methodology for testing for and quantifying outsourcing at an economy-wide level. This…
read more >>The Contribution of Manufacturing and Services to Employment Creation and Growth in South Africa
Tregenna examines the linkages between the manufacturing and services sectors. It also looks at linkages between these two sectors and the rest of the domestic economy. Tregenna does this by analysing input-output tables and employment trends. This reveals that manufacturing is particularly important as a source of demand for the services sector as well as…
read more >>Issues of Growth and Employment Concerning the Manufacturing and Services Sectors in South Africa
There has been much talk in recent years, both in South Africa and internationally, of the rise of the services sector. Manufacturing is regarded by some as no longer being able to generate economic growth and employment on the scale required in a country such as South Africa. Others have concern that there is a…
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