Why Has Unemployment Risen in the New South Africa

Abhijit Banerjee, Sebastian Galiani, James Levinsohn, Zoë McLaren and Ingrid Woolard ()

No 13167, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We document the rise in unemployment in South Africa since the transition in 1994. We describe the likely causes of this increase and analyze whether the increase in unemployment is due to structural changes in the economy (resulting in a new equilibrium unemployment rate) or to negative shocks (that temporarily have increased unemployment). We conclude the former are more important. Our analysis includes a multinomial logit approach to understanding transitions in individual-level changes in labor market status using the first nationally representative panel in South Africa. Our analysis highlights several key constraints to addressing unemployment in South Africa.

JEL-codes: J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev and nep-lab
Date: 2007-06
Note: ITI LS
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13167.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Journal Article: Why has unemployment risen in the New South Africa? (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13167

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13167
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().