IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctw/wpaper/05098.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Market Failure, Human Capital, and Job Search Dynamics in South Africa: The Case of Duncan Village

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Duff
  • David Fryer

    (Department of Economics and Economic History, Rhodes University)

Abstract

This paper argues that the economic literature on unemployment and poverty in South Africa has under-explored potentially important feedback mechanisms which, because they serve to change the structure of labour markets and affect human capital trajectories, serve to endogenise labour market exclusion. Using a tailor-made database from Duncan Village, East London, this paper probes such processes, focussing around the question of job search. The evidence presented suggests that endogenous factors generating labour market exclusion are important in locking-in exclusion, and suggests that macro-micro linkages need to be further considered.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Duff & David Fryer, 2005. "Market Failure, Human Capital, and Job Search Dynamics in South Africa: The Case of Duncan Village," Working Papers 05098, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    • Handle: RePEc:ctw:wpaper:05098
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7365
    File Function: First version, 2005
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McIntosh, Steven & Vignoles, Anna, 2001. "Measuring and Assessing the Impact of Basic Skills on Labour Market Outcomes," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 453-481, July.
    2. Thomas Lange (ed.), 1998. "Unemployment in Theory and Practice," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1253.
    3. Masato Aoki, 2001. "To the Rescue or to the Abyss: Notes on the Marx in Keynes," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 931-954, December.
    4. Anne Case & Angus Deaton, 1999. "School Inputs and Educational Outcomes in South Africa," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 1047-1084.
    5. Michael Spence, 2002. "Signaling in Retrospect and the Informational Structure of Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(3), pages 434-459, June.
    6. J D Lewis, 2002. "Promoting Growth and Employment in South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 70(4), pages 338-358, March.
    7. Antoni Calvó-Armengol & Matthew O. Jackson, 2004. "The Effects of Social Networks on Employment and Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 426-454, June.
    8. Thomas Hertz, 2003. "Upward Bias in the Estimated Returns to Education: Evidence from South Africa," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1354-1368, September.
    9. Ana M. Ferrer & W. Craig Riddell, 2002. "The role of credentials in the Canadian labour market," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(4), pages 879-905, November.
    10. Duflo, Esther, 2004. "The medium run effects of educational expansion: evidence from a large school construction program in Indonesia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 163-197, June.
    11. Anne Case & Motohiro Yogo, 1999. "Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristics of Schools in South Africa," Working Papers 1999-1, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    12. Nicoli Nattrass, 2003. "Unemployment and AIDS: The Social-Democratic Challenge for South Africa," SALDRU/CSSR Working Papers 043, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    13. Akerlof, George A & Main, Brian G M, 1981. "An Experience-Weighted Measure of Employment and Unemployment Durations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 1003-1011, December.
    14. Screpanti, Ernesto & Zamagni, Stefano, 2005. "An Outline of the History of Economic Thought," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780199279142, Decembrie.
    15. George A. Akerlof & Janet L. Yellen, 1985. "Unemployment Through the Filter of Memory," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(3), pages 747-773.
    16. David Fryer & Désiré Vencatachellum, 2003. "Returns to Education in South Africa: Evidence from the Machibisa Township," Working Papers 03076, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    17. Williamson, Oliver E, 1981. "The Modern Corporation: Origins, Evolution, Attributes," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 1537-1568, December.
    18. Anne Case & Motohiro Yogo, 1999. "Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristics of Schools in South Africa," Working Papers 1999-1, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    19. repec:pri:rpdevs:case_yogo_school_quality is not listed on IDEAS
    20. JW Fedderke & Martine Mariotti, 2002. "Changing Labour Market Conditions In South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 70(5), pages 830-864, June.
    21. Berry, A. & Sabot, R. H., 1978. "Labour market performance in developing countries: A survey," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 6(11-12), pages 1199-1242.
    22. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    23. David Fryer & Désiré Vencatachellum, 2004. "Coordination Failure and Employment in South Africa," Working Papers 04086, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stewart Ngandu & Carolyn Chisadza, 2018. "Employer characteristics and youth employment outcomes in the formal sector in South Africa: Assessment using administrative tax data," WIDER Working Paper Series 82, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Stewart Ngandu & Carolyn Chisadza, 2018. "Employer characteristics and youth employment outcomes in the formal sector in South Africa: Assessment using administrative tax data," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-82, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Orazem, Peter F. & King, Elizabeth M., 2008. "Schooling in Developing Countries: The Roles of Supply, Demand and Government Policy," Handbook of Development Economics, in: T. Paul Schultz & John A. Strauss (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 55, pages 3475-3559, Elsevier.
    2. Nikolov, Plamen & Jimi, Nusrat & Chang, Jerray, 2020. "The Importance of Cognitive Domains and the Returns to Schooling in South Africa: Evidence from Two Labor Surveys," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    3. Robert Hill, 2019. "Does IEB make the grade? Alternative testing methods and Educational outcomes: The case of the IEB in South Africa," Working Papers 201904, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    4. Fabrice Murtin & Thomas Laurent & Geoff Barnard & Dean Janse van Rensburg & Vijay Reddy & George Frempong & Lolita Winnaar, 2015. "Policy Determinants of School Outcomes under Model Uncertainty: Evidence from South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 83(3), pages 317-334, September.
    5. Wößmann, Ludger, 2001. "New Evidence on the Missing Resource-Performance Link in Education," Kiel Working Papers 1051, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    6. Debra Shepherd, 2013. "A question of efficiency: decomposing South African reading test scores using PIRLS 2006," Working Papers 20/2013, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    7. Servaas VAN DER BERG & Onelle BURGER, 2003. "Education And Socio‐Economic Differentials: A Study Of School Performance In The Western Cape," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 71(3), pages 496-522, September.
    8. Fasih, Tazeen & Patrinos, Harry Anthony & Sakellariou, Chris, 2013. "Functional literacy, heterogeneity and the returns to schooling : multi-country evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6697, The World Bank.
    9. Selod, Harris & Zenou, Yves, 2003. "Private versus public schools in post-Apartheid South African cities: theory and policy implications," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 351-394, August.
    10. Asmus Zoch, 2017. "The effect of neighbourhoods and school quality on education and labour market outcomes in South Africa," Working Papers 08/2017, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    11. Ludger Wößmann, 2003. "Schooling Resources, Educational Institutions and Student Performance: the International Evidence," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(2), pages 117-170, May.
    12. Cobus Burger & Servaas van der Berg, 2011. "Modelling cognitive skills, ability and school quality to explain labour market earnings differentials," Working Papers 08/2011, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    13. Tassew, W/Hanna & Alemu, Mekonnen & Jones, Nicola, 2009. "Education choices in Ethiopia: what determines whether poor households send their children to school?," Ethiopian Journal of Economics, Ethiopian Economics Association, vol. 17(01), pages 1-80, February.
    14. O'Gorman, Melanie, 2010. "Racial earnings inequality in South Africa: An assessment of policy options," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 703-718, November.
    15. Yamauchi, Futoshi, 2005. "Race, equity, and public schools in post-Apartheid South Africa: Equal opportunity for all kids," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 213-233, April.
    16. Yamauchi, Futoshi & Nishiyama, Shinichi, 2005. "Community, inequality, and local public goods: evidence from school financing in South Africa," FCND discussion papers 201, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    17. Yamauchi, Futoshi, 2004. "Race, equity, and public schools in post-apartheid South Africa: is opportunity equal for all kids?," FCND discussion papers 182, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    18. Megan Louw & Servaas van der Berg & Derek Yu, 2006. "Educational attainment and intergenerational social mobility in South Africa," Working Papers 09/2006, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    19. Servaas van der Berg & Megan Louw, 2007. "Lessons learnt from SACMEQII: South African student performance in regional context," Working Papers 16/2007, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    20. Nakabayashi, Masaki, 2011. "Schooling, employer learning, and internal labor market effect: Wage dynamics and human capital investment in the Japanese steel industry, 1930-1960s," MPRA Paper 30597, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    South Africa: macro-micro linkages; unemployment and poverty;

    JEL classification:

    • A1 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ctw:wpaper:05098. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Waseema Petersen The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Waseema Petersen to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpuctza.html .

    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.