Time: 14:30-16:00, November 13, 2019 (Wednesday) 

Venue: 1722, Rear Main Building, Beijing Normal University

Speaker：Refilwe Lepelle（Lecturer in the School of Economics, University of Cape Town）

Topic：Tariff Liberalisation Effects on Gendered Labour Market Outcomes

Abstract: This study investigates the gendered effects of trade liberalisation on regional services sector employment in South Africa over the period 1996 to 2011. We draw on employment data for 234 municipalities and exploit variations in pre-liberalisation industry composition of manufacturing to identify the effect of tariff reductions on services employment. The study first investigates whether the services sector absorbs (or is likely to absorb) the employment lost in manufacturing. The main findings indicate that tariff liberalisation has contributed to a modest structural shift in the sectoral composition of employment in manufacturing relative to services between 1996 and 2011. This is consistent with previous findings in the literature for emerging economies like Brazil and India. In addition, the study reveals that regions that experienced higher tariff reductions also experienced slow growth in services employment. Within services sub-sectors, we find that these aggregate results can be attributed to the finance and construction sectors. Further analysis demonstrates that lower derived demand, income, and investment, which are linked to the decline in manufacturing from tariff liberalisation, explain this negative association. Even after controlling for spillover effects, we do not find evidence of rising growth in employment in services. Finally, we find that negative tariff liberalisation effects on services employment are stronger for men compared to women, even after controlling for spillover effects. Looking across labour categorised into Black and White, the results show that the gendered effects also differ by race. Weaker employment growth for men is concentrated amongst Africans. In the case of women, we find that tariff liberalisation reduced growth in employment in services of Whites, but not Africans.

There are several implications that can be drawn from these results. Firstly, while tariff liberalisation induced a structural shift in the composition of employment towards services, this is not driven by increases in services employment, but rather by larger reductions in employment in manufacturing. Secondly, strong spillover effects from manufacturing into services compound the adverse effect of tariff liberalisation on employment across regions. Thirdly, theory explains that trade has strong distributional effects. The challenge in some countries, such as South Africa, is that tariff liberalisaition may compound the prior distributional gaps.

About the Speaker：Refilwe is a Lecturer in the School of Economics, University of Cape Town. She is also a Graduate Associate at South African Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) and Policy Research on International Services and Manufacturing (PRISM). She worked in in the private sector and then at South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) as an industry analyst. Her work at the IDC involved finding solutions to problems of employment creation and industry as well as economic development. She has a Master of Commers majoring in Economics from the University of the Witwatersrand. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Economics at the University of Cape Town. Her research interests include international trade, labour economics, development economics and gender. The title of her thesis is Tariff liberalisation effects on gendered labour market outcomes: The Case of South Africa. The main objective of the thesis is to examine the gendered effects of trade liberalisation on local labour markets in South Africa during the post-apartheid period. The thesis aims to provide insight into the differential effects of tariff liberalisation on labour market outcomes which has also contributed to gender disparity