ESTIMATING THE SUBSTITUTABILITY OF AFRICAN AND WHITE WORKERS IN SOUTH AFRICAN MANUFACTURING, 1950-1985

Martine Mariotti

Economic History of Developing Regions, 2012, vol. 27, issue 2, 47-60

Abstract: In this paper I estimate the elasticity of substitution between African and white workers in the South African manufacturing industry during Apartheid. I find that the elasticity of substitution remained fairly high despite changes in the technology used in manufacturing, despite changes in the allocation of jobs to African and white workers, and despite the increasing skill differential between white and African workers. The elasticity of substitution for production workers declined from 9.81 in 1950 to 4.64 by 1985. This result shows that African and white workers were substitutes throughout Apartheid notwithstanding legislation restricting the types of jobs that African workers could do.

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/20780389.2012.745664 (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:taf:rehdxx:v:27:y:2012:i:2:p:47-60

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rehd20

DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2012.745664

Access Statistics for this article

Economic History of Developing Regions is currently edited by Alex Klein and Alfonso Herranz-Loncan

More articles in Economic History of Developing Regions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().