Trade Liberalisation and Labour Demand within South African Manufacturing Firms

Lawrence Edwards and A Behar

Studies in Economics and Econometrics, 2006, vol. 30, issue 2, 127-146

Abstract: Using new detailed tariff data, wages disaggregated by skill level and firm level information, this paper ascertains the relationships between trade, technology and labour demand and investigates the effects of tariff changes on factor prices in South African manufacturing. We find evidence that trade liberalization and technological change have affected the skill structure of employment. Export orientation, raw materials imports, training, investment in computers and firm age are positively associated with the skill intensity of production. We also find that tariff liberalisation raised the return to capital relative to labour, but that the negative impact on labour is concentrated on semiskilled workers. Tariff liberalisation mandated a rise in real returns to unskilled workers.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10800379.2006.12106411 (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:rseexx:v:30:y:2006:i:2:p:127-146

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rsee20

DOI: 10.1080/10800379.2006.12106411

Access Statistics for this article

Studies in Economics and Econometrics is currently edited by Willem Bester

More articles in Studies in Economics and Econometrics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().