Karolien De Bruyne

Challenges for Successful Wage Setting in Europe

The creation of the European Monetary Union (EMU) fundamentally alters macro-economic policy-making in the eleven participating countries. The loss of the exchange rate instrument through the introduction of the single currency, the transfer of monetary sovereignty to the European Central Bank (ECB) and the budgetary discipline of the stability pact severely narrow the scope for governments that wish to address adverse economic shocks (see e.g. Bayoumi and Eichengreen (1992), Carporale (1993)). By lack of these familiar policy instruments, the focus is shifted towards wage adjustments as a means of coping with changing macro-economic conditions.

Improving Industrial Policy Intervention: The Case of Steel in South Africa

Abstract We contribute to the lack of tools to support efficient industrial policy-making, especially in the mineral beneficiation policy literature. To address this vacuum, we adapt the product space analysis approach to incorporate an input-output value chain lens. This framework is applied to the case of steel in South Africa to derive novel insights regarding the (in)efficiency of implementing a downstream linkage-based beneficiation policy. Our dynamic analysis approach allows for interactions with the rest of the product space. We find that a ‘leap-frogging’ approach to development within the value chain may be more optimal than a strict beneficiation based industrial policy.