 What Does South Africa's Pattern of Trade Say About its Labor Markets?Arvind Subramanian and Trevor Alleyne No 2001/148, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund Abstract: This paper examines the factor intensity of South Africa's trade. The conclusion is that South Africa is revealed though its trade pattern to be capital abundant (relative to labor). Surprisingly, this result holds especially for South Africa's trade with its high income partners, which should presumably have been more capital-rich than South Africa. Moreover, this revealed capital intensity of South African production was not reversed during the 1990s after the dismantling of apartheid. This favoring of capital use, against the background of high and rising under-utilization of the country's labor resources, raises questions about the functioning of South Africa's labor market institutions. Keywords: WP; mi fontweight; South Africa; trade; factor intensity; South Africa's net export; production structure; disaggregated trade data; South Africa's trade; trade pattern; WEFA South Africa; merchandise trade account; intensity of trade and production; manufac tured goods; industry trade; Exports; Capital productivity; Trade balance; Consumption; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2001/148 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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