This paper uses cumulative export experience functions to explore the structural dynamics of South Africa’s exports for the period 1990-2003. The main issue is whether the trade liberalization of the 1990s has produced a sustainable export growth and diversification into non-traditional products, or been limited to an increase in traditional exports. The paper finds a large spread of emerging non-traditional accelerating export products across industry clusters of different factor intensities, steadily increasing their proportion in total exports and her main markets. Shift-share and correlation analyses show that increased intra-industry specialization and trade within import competing product groups explain the structural change in the direction of export diversity. With respect to quality, as measured by relative unit prices of exports and imports in intra-industry trade with the EU and the US, a relative improvement of export quality is found. App., bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
