Enterprise development for job creation and growth

South Africa’s potential growth has fallen over the last 20 years for reasons that are not deeply understood. The work stream on Enterprise development for job creation and growth aims to increase the competitiveness, growth, and job creation of South Africa’s private sector through explorations of newly available firm-level data. This research will examine the many factors which influence firms’ performances, including value chains, whether larger businesses succeed at the expense of smaller businesses, infrastructure, resource availability, research and development, and credit access among many others, but with special attention to how these factors impact job creation and can be impacted by the policy environment.

While continuing to develop the tax administrative database, work stream 1 will also build capacity within South African institutions in the management and use of large micro-datasets for microeconomic research. Specifically, several research papers will be commissioned that rely on large microeconomic datasets to deepen knowledge in this important area, including papers on domestic and global value chains, market power, trade, multinationals, the knowledge economy, and the service sector.

Working paper
Caio Torres Mazzi, Gideon Ndubuisi, and Elvis Avenyo
Using the South African Revenue Service and National Treasury firm-level panel data for 2009–17, this paper investigates how global value chain-related trade affects the export performance of manufacturing firms in South Africa. In particular, the...
November 2020
Enterprise development
Working paper
Joshua Budlender and Amina Ebrahim
This paper documents the industry classification variables in the anonymized tax microdata available for research at the National Treasury Secure Data Facility in Pretoria. It discusses how the variables in the data are related to...
August 2020
Enterprise development
Working paper
Aalia Cassim
Attempts to regulate the temporary employment sector have had mixed results internationally. In South Africa, temporary employment was regulated in 2015 through amendments to the Labour Relations Act. This paper uses administrative data to examine...
June 2020
Enterprise development
Working paper
Lawrence Edwards and Ayanda Hlatshwayo
This paper uses detailed firm transaction data on manufactured exports to analyse the dilution of the real exchange rate-export relationship in South Africa over the period 2010 to 2014. Our empirical results show that firms...
February 2020
Enterprise development
Working paper
Ayanda Hlatshwayo, Friedrich Kreuser, Carol Newman, and John Rand
This paper uses matched employer-employee data from South Africa to examine the extent to which technology transfers between firms through the hiring of workers. Allowing for differential spillovers based on observable technology differences between sending...
February 2020
Enterprise development
Working paper
Hammed Amusa, Njeri Wabiri, and David Fadiran
Using comprehensive, anonymized tax administrative data for the 2008–14 period, we examine firm-level productivity in South Africa. Measures of firm-level productivity are included in a spatial autoregressive model that assesses spillovers from total factor productivity...
January 2020
Enterprise development
Working paper
Anmar Pretorius, Carli Bezuidenhout, Marianne Matthee, and Derick Blaauw
In South Africa, the manufacturing sector—important for growth and employment creation—has shown declining growth, poor productivity performance, decreased labour demand, and increased imports of intermediate goods (offshoring activities). Offshoring influences jobs and wages differently depending...
October 2019
Enterprise development
Technical workshop
29 Jan 2019 / 08:30 to 17:30
Enterprise development
Researchers from the Enterprise development for job creation and growth work stream will meet in Pretoria to share their works in progress. The annual work in progress meeting provides an opportunity for researchers to share...