Comparative Analysis of the Impact of International Trade on Wages in the Apple and Apricot Industries of South Africa 

The purpose of this study is to comparatively analyse the impact of international trade on wages output in the South African apple and apricot industries between 1990 and 2018. The study used the secondary data sourced from Global Trade Atlas, industry associations, government organisations and research institutions. It applied a time series analysis and variables were subjected to unit roots test using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller test. The descriptive statistics was applied to provide a summary statistical description of all the variables The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Granger causality test were adapted to comparatively analyse the impact of international trade on wages in the South African apple and apricot industries. Furthermore, diagnostic statistics were conducted to test the robustness of the regressions. The study's findings suggest that in the long run, exports output positively impacts wages output, while imports output negatively impacts the wages output. The same trend was observed in the short run, while the error correction term of apple and apricot estimations shows that the errors will converge towards equilibrium soon. The findings of the Granger causality test revealed the bi-directional relationship between wages output and exports output in both apple and apricot regressions. The policy recommendations and concluding remarks are that the South African govern