The Cost of Rigidity: The Case of the South African Labor Market

Johannes Fedderke

Comparative Economic Studies, 2012, vol. 54, issue 4, 809-842

Abstract: The South African labor market has been characterized by high and persistent levels of unemployment, and a poor capacity to create jobs. This paper examines existing evidence on what rigidities have generated this outcome. Pricing power in output markets, as well as labor supply and demand side rigidities are all found to have contributed, resulting in excessive increases in real wage costs which under conditions of relatively low economic growth, has produced a stagnant labor market. Policy requirements are the pursuit of stonger economic growth and reductions in real labor costs.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v54/n4/pdf/ces201225a.pdf Link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v54/n4/full/ces201225a.html Link to full text HTML (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:compes:v:54:y:2012:i:4:p:809-842

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/41294/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Comparative Economic Studies is currently edited by Nauro Campos

More articles in Comparative Economic Studies from Palgrave Macmillan, Association for Comparative Economic Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().