IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/intecp/978-1-349-23458-5_9.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Unorthodox Response of the South African Economy to Changes in Macroeconomic Policy

In: Economics in a Changing World

Author

Listed:
  • Charles Harvey

    (University of Sussex)

  • Carolyn Jenkins

    (University of Natal
    University of Oxford)

Abstract

In response to a fall in the rate of growth of gross domestic product (GDP) in the mid-1970s, the South African government eventually, in the 1980s, allowed the nominal exchange rate to fall and tried to achieve a positive real cost of borrowing. The response to these policy changes should have been more rapid growth of exports, especially labour-intensive exports, and a greater use of labour throughout the economy. Indeed, exports did grow fast after the change in exchange rate policy in 1983, but they were already growing fast before that change. Moreover, export growth after the policy change was mainly in capital-intensive products; and the economy did not shift to using more labour. By the end of the 1980s, less than 10 per cent of those entering the labour force were getting formal-sector jobs.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles Harvey & Carolyn Jenkins, 1994. "The Unorthodox Response of the South African Economy to Changes in Macroeconomic Policy," International Economic Association Series, in: Edmar L. Bacha (ed.), Economics in a Changing World, chapter 9, pages 195-222, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-349-23458-5_9
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-23458-5_9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-349-23458-5_9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.