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26946 results in Economic history

Page 317 of 1348

  • Statistical Appendix: selected data series, 1800–2010

  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 555-594

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses some of the key geographic shifts in Australia's international economic relations in the second half of the 20th century, particularly the refocusing of investment, trade and migration towards East Asia. It then examines the main explanatory factors and analyses the consequences of the shifts, which have primarily been increased material prosperity for most of Australia's population, a greater openness of the economy and society, and the adoption of multiculturalism. The main variable affecting international economic relations is the exchange rate. In 1972 a screening process was introduced to monitor foreign investment and limit takeover of Australian companies. The FIRB was established in 1975, and the screening process was tightened under successive governments. In 1983 the FIRB rejection rate doubled. Economic liberalisation in Australia and New Zealand was accompanied by deeper trans-Tasman integration through the 1982 CER Agreement.

  • 7 - Industrialising Australia’s natural capital

  • from Part 3 - Economic expansion of the colonies
  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 150-177

  • Summary

    Australian economic history, a history that is 'Australian' not only in reference but also character, a history that shares little pedigree with British economic history, and remains apart from the practice of American economic history. This chapter tells the story of writing this history by means of a schema of four generations. In 1935 Shann lost 'life's unequal struggle', and from 1941 Fitzpatrick's attention wandered from economic history. The chapter discusses the two pre-eminent figures in this phase: Sydney James Butlin (1910-77) and his younger brother Noel. These two pre-eminent figures of the interwar period were shooting stars who made their mark in bursts of inspired ardour. The enduring market for popular Australian economic history contrasts with the increasingly embattled position of academic Australian economic history from the late 1980s. This beleaguered position has also been shared by Australian economics.

  • 22 - Wealth and welfare

  • from Part 6 - Looking backwards and to the future
  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 489-510

  • Summary

    In the 20th century a little regulated and rapidly growing labour market was transformed following the depression of the 1890s and Federation in 1901. This chapter focuses on four key aspects of the development of the Australian labour market since Federation. First are the patterns in the total labour supply as influenced by population increase, participation, hours of work and trends in labour-force composition. Second is the growth in workforce skills, as represented by the changing role and place of education, including vocational training. Third is the evolution of Australia's distinctive pattern of industrial relations, including the structure of wages. Fourth are the trends and fluctuations in average wages and unemployment. A resurgence of productivity from the microeconomic reform era of the 1980s and 1990s was dissipating by the second decade of the 21st century and was being seen as the dominant concern for future policy.

  • 10 - Infrastructure and colonial socialism

  • from Part 3 - Economic expansion of the colonies
  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 222-244

  • Summary

    The Australian colonies evolved a government-centred model of infrastructure provision that was novel and, by the standards of the times, reasonably effective in supplying a broad range of infrastructure services. This chapter surveys existing interpretations and explanations of the role government played in infrastructure development in the Australian colonies, especially rural rail, providing explanations that blend efficiency, path dependence and, ultimately, vulnerability to rent seeking. By international standards, the Victorian commission model was an important innovation, giving rise to Andre Metin's famous descriptor, 'socialism without doctrine'. As with transport, the economic and social case for investment in communications sprang from the 'tyranny of distance'. The history of rail in the 19th century shows considerable vacillation between government and private roles; thus, some explanation is needed of why the public ownership model, even if initially contingent and accidental, 'stuck' and spread in the Australian colonies.

  • 21 - A statistical narrative: Australia, 1800–2010

  • from Part 6 - Looking backwards and to the future
  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 465-488

  • Summary

    Economic development has been a focus of much government policy throughout Australia's history. This chapter examines some of the major aspects of public policy in Australia between the late 19th century and the immediate years following World War 2. It focuses on major policy decisions relating to international trade, labour, immigration, competition, rural production and management of the economy during wartime. During the second half of the 19th century, Australia yielded vast wealth from natural resources. There were large discoveries of minerals, most notably those of alluvial gold in Victoria from 1851 onwards, but also copper in South Australia and gold in other colonies, in particular Western Australia towards the end of the century. Customs and excise duties were to become almost the federal government's sole revenue source for the first 10 years of Federation, and a major source in the years leading to World War 2.

  • 14 - Big business and foreign firms

  • from Part 4 - A national economy
  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 309-329

  • Summary

    This chapter combines chronological and thematic approaches to highlight the contributions of the chief resource industries to Australia's economic development. It discusses three key periods, being those associated with the forming of a pastoral economy to 1850, the augmenting of the resources economy by minerals and new land during 1850-90, and the adjustments and diversification of primary industries during 1890-1914. Within these periods the narrative explores the connections of the natural resource industries with enterprise, skills and technology, institutions and social capital, export-led growth, a staples trap and resource curse, and extracted resource rents and sustainability. In 1820 Australia's settler economy was confined to a narrow coastal strip of New South Wales and the riverine valleys of Van Diemen's Land. The first pastoral boom was faltering in the 1840s, although slower population growth ameliorated a tendency towards GDP per capita retardation.

  • 6 - Technological change

  • from Part 3 - Economic expansion of the colonies
  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 125-149

  • Summary

    Technological change is a core component of modern economic growth. This chapter examines fundamental questions about Australia's technological development between the beginnings of European settlement and Federation. It explains the main patterns of technological change in colonial Australia. Technology is the body of practical knowledge and methods used in production and consumption. It tells us how different raw materials, equipment and skills can be brought together to yield a desirable outcome and extend an economy's production possibilities. Technological change in Australia was largely an urban phenomenon. Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth were the vibrant hearts of Australia's technological system. The emergence of professional patent agents provided further evidence of the importance that the patent system had come to assume in the market for technological ideas. The transfer of technology benefited Australia's own technological capabilities by allowing Australians to focus their creative energies on pursuits for which they had distinct advantages in terms of expertise and skill.

  • 4 - The Aboriginal legacy

  • from Part 2 - Transition
  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 73-96

  • Summary

    Aboriginal people are largely ignored in conventional economic history of early colonial Australia. The Aboriginal legacy is largely evident today through surviving Indigenous knowledge retained in the growing population of Indigenous Australians. This chapter builds on McLean and White by describing key economic features of the Aboriginal economy while dispelling some myths about the lack of resource management, capital investment, or task specialisation. Noel Butlin radically altered the debate about the pre-colonial Aboriginal population size and brought both economic and demographic techniques to understanding of whole Australian economy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The chapter revisits Butlin's analysis in the context of more recent literature. It then, discusses the economic prehistory of Aboriginal Australia in the early colonial period. The first contact between Aboriginal people and the outside world are also described. The total Australian population was still less than the pre-contact Aboriginal population until the gold rush brought a threefold increase in the number of colonists.

  • 16 - The labour market

  • from Part 4 - A national economy
  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 351-372

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the sustaining role of business cooperation in a small, remote economy, and the rich sources of social capital. It compares the differing pattern of business across the colonies and between city and bush, and examines the growth of firms in manufacturing. The rapid mid-century expansion in the Australian colonies provided opportunities and challenges for business. The pastoral boom that began in the 1830s and the gold rush of the 1850s motivated rapid increases in exports, immigration, per capita incomes, and transportation. The chapter interrogates major public forms of enterprise, and addresses the question of Aboriginal enterprise. Finally, the chapter investigates an important comparative question, the degree to which Australian enterprise shared in the movement towards a more scientific and generalisable approach to the practice of management that was starting to take hold in several nations towards the end of the 19th century, particularly the United States, Britain and Japan.

  • References

  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 595-656

  • Summary

    Over the past 30 years governments in Australia introduced a set of policies that have come to be known as microeconomic reform. This chapter provides an overview of main reforms and rationales. It describes a major area of reform, and evidence on specific effects of that reform, roughly in the sequence that the reforms occurred. Political economy has a major role in most accounts of the introduction of microeconomic reform in the 1980s and early 1990s. In particular, several factors assisted the federal Labor government of this period to introduce reforms. The reforms to regulation of the finance sector in Australia had been primarily implemented to improve the capacity to manage the macroeconomy. The chapter discusses agricultural sector, manufacturing industry, government sector, transport sector, communications sector, utilities sector, competition policy and labour market in Australia. Finally, it presents an overall assessment of the effects of microeconomic reform.

  • 17 - The service economy

  • from Part 4 - A national economy
  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 373-394

  • Summary

    The Australian colonies evolved a government-centred model of infrastructure provision that was novel and, by the standards of the times, reasonably effective in supplying a broad range of infrastructure services. This chapter surveys existing interpretations and explanations of the role government played in infrastructure development in the Australian colonies, especially rural rail, providing explanations that blend efficiency, path dependence and, ultimately, vulnerability to rent seeking. By international standards, the Victorian commission model was an important innovation, giving rise to Andre Metin's famous descriptor, 'socialism without doctrine'. As with transport, the economic and social case for investment in communications sprang from the 'tyranny of distance'. The history of rail in the 19th century shows considerable vacillation between government and private roles; thus, some explanation is needed of why the public ownership model, even if initially contingent and accidental, 'stuck' and spread in the Australian colonies.

  • 1 - The historiography of Australian economic history

  • from Part 1 - Framework
  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 11-28

  • Summary

    Australian economic history, a history that is 'Australian' not only in reference but also character, a history that shares little pedigree with British economic history, and remains apart from the practice of American economic history. This chapter tells the story of writing this history by means of a schema of four generations. In 1935 Shann lost 'life's unequal struggle', and from 1941 Fitzpatrick's attention wandered from economic history. The chapter discusses the two pre-eminent figures in this phase: Sydney James Butlin (1910-77) and his younger brother Noel. These two pre-eminent figures of the interwar period were shooting stars who made their mark in bursts of inspired ardour. The enduring market for popular Australian economic history contrasts with the increasingly embattled position of academic Australian economic history from the late 1980s. This beleaguered position has also been shared by Australian economics.

  • 18 - Reorientation of trade, investment and migration

  • from Part 5 - Building the modern economy
  • Edited by Simon Ville, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Glenn Withers, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    08 October 2014, pp 397-418

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses some of the key geographic shifts in Australia's international economic relations in the second half of the 20th century, particularly the refocusing of investment, trade and migration towards East Asia. It then examines the main explanatory factors and analyses the consequences of the shifts, which have primarily been increased material prosperity for most of Australia's population, a greater openness of the economy and society, and the adoption of multiculturalism. The main variable affecting international economic relations is the exchange rate. In 1972 a screening process was introduced to monitor foreign investment and limit takeover of Australian companies. The FIRB was established in 1975, and the screening process was tightened under successive governments. In 1983 the FIRB rejection rate doubled. Economic liberalisation in Australia and New Zealand was accompanied by deeper trans-Tasman integration through the 1982 CER Agreement.

Page 317 of 1348