Exchange Rates, Growth, and Unemployment
There has been some debate on the impact of exchange rate volatility and levels in South Africa. This is a particular concern as South Africa needs to dramatically expand sustainable employment and at the same time raise value-added in its production of goods and services. These are not necessarily complementary objectives for a mineral-exporting economy….
read more >>The Effect of Exchange Rate Volatility on Trade and Employment: A Brief Review of the Literature
This paper forms part of the Human Sciences Research Council’s project on exchange rates and employment (MACRO006), which seeks to understand the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on employment in South Africa. The explanation of the factors determining the volatility of exchange rates is interesting, but from the policy perspective of this project, not an…
read more >>Exchange Rate and Employment Project: Overview
Ngandu summarises the Human Sciences Research Council’s project on the relationship between the exchange rate and employment outcomes, and its possible policy implications. While there appears to be consensus that the currency is too volatile, little attention has been paid to what an employment-inducing exchange rate would be. The suite of papers in the exchange…
read more >>A Review of Trade in Services
The flow of trade in services is notoriously hard to measure, which makes it difficult to identify its role in driving the growth and competitiveness of the economy. This report reviews the official data on South Africa’s trade in services and compares it to other sources of information to assess the extent to which the…
read more >>Manufacturing Exports and Employment Growth
Davies considers the role of manufacturing exports in creating employment. It looks at the potential and limitations of the sector itself, and also its interaction with other sectors. He assesses where export growth might occur, and the contribution of different sectors to such growth, given their labour intensity, backward and forward linkages, and export dependence….
read more >>The Impact of the Crisis on Semi-Industrialised Countries
Williamson considers the channels through which the global financial crisis affects the real economy. There are two basic mechanisms through which a recession can be transmitted to a country from abroad. One is through trade or some other form of current account receipts. The second is through the financial markets. Other forms of transmission are…
read more >>International Policy Response of Developing Countries to the Global Economic Crisis
“The impact of the 2008 financial crisis on emerging markets like South Africa has been quite different from its impact on developed economies, and so too have been the responses to the crisis. This paper presents an overview of the policy responses employed to counter the effects of the crisis in Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico and…
read more >>Elements of Employment Scenario-Building: do Sources of Job Creation Matter? (Three different versions Oct 06, Nov 06 and Jan 07)
“This paper was the initial version of the HSRC Employment Scenarios. Altman starts by proposing 4 categories of job creating sectors: those that focus on poverty alleviation (such as special employment projects), the public service, “follower” services (generally low paid non-traded activity such as retail) and “dynamic” goods and services industries that are traded (such…
read more >>Background to Employment Scenarios
The Human Sciences Research Council’s Evidence-Based Employment Scenarios project was established to develop feasible scenarios of the economic structure to meet the goal of reducing unemployment by half between 2004 and 2014. It aims to identify the path and policy complements required to achieve these scenarios, as well as their political, financial and bureaucratic implications….
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