Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/229263 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2020/39
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
We study the relationship between product market competition and labour market outcomes in South Africa. We combine firm-level data from tax records with individual-level data from the labour force survey. We estimate markups across sectors, and derive a measure of employment concentration in high-markup sectors across South African district municipalities. We then test whether individual labour market outcomes differ systematically in those district municipalities where employment is more concentrated in high-markup sectors. We find that higher employment concentration in high-markup sectors is associated with higher unemployment and lower likelihood of transitions from unemployment to employment. This is differentially more the case for non-White, lower educated, and young individuals. The relationship remains strong when conditioning on a rich set of individual- and district-level covariates, including employment concentration per se.
Subjects: 
product market competition
tax data
unemployment
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9256-796-5
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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