Browsing by Author "Fryer, David"

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    Co-ordination Failure and Employment in South Africa
    (2004-06) Fryer, David; Vencatachellum, Desire
    South Africa lost more than 890,000 jobs, but saw an increase in the number of skilled workers from 1989 to 1999. We argue that this is the consequence of well-documented acute apartheid-era distortions which led to a current coordination failure where (i) firms are locked into a mostly skillintensive technology where they have very little demand for semi-skilled and unskilled labour, and (ii) there are too few semi-skilled and skilled blacks.
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    Market Failure, Human Capital, and Job Search Dynamics in South Africa: The Case of Duncan Village
    (2005-09) Duff, Patrick; Fryer, David
    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.
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    Returns to Education in South Africa: Evidence from the Machibisa Township
    (2003-05) Fryer, David; Vencatachellum, Desire
    We develop a model where blacks in the private sector earn no returns to education if there are relatively too few educated blacks. Using a sample of black females in the late apartheid Kwa Zulu to control for labour market specific effects, we find that more than a fifth of labour market participants are self-employed. There are no returns to primary education and positive returns for the first two years of secondary education.
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    Open Access
    Returns to Education in South Africa: Evidence from the Machibisa Township
    (2003-05) Fryer, David; Vencatachellum, Desire
    We develop a model where blacks in the private sector earn no returns to education if there are relatively too few educated blacks. Using a sample of black females in the late apartheid Kwa Zulu to control for labour market specific effects, we find that more than a fifth of labour market participants are self-employed. There are no returns to primary education and positive returns for the first two years of secondary education.