Trade liberalisation, prices and the skill premium in South Africa

We look at how trade liberalisation, working through product prices, has affected the skill premium in South Africa over the period 1990-2009. Our main finding is that trade liberalisation lead to a reduction in prices over this period, and through prices mandated a rise in the skill premium of 3.3%. The structure of the skill premium did not stay constant over the period. In the sub-period 1990-1999, trade liberalisation mandated a fall in the skill premium of 10.6% and in the other sub-period 2000-2009, trade liberalisation mandated a rise in the skill premium of 11.6%. Our main results are consistent with the sector bias of tariff cuts over these periods, however they do not pass some of the robustness checks that we perform.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

School of Economics

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Mashiane, Jeffrey

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Edwards, Lawrence

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10725

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/10725