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The Australian Government's White Paper ' Australia in the Asian Century' is the first large-scale official look in the twenty-first century at economic change in Asia and how it affects Australian opportunities and challenges. This paper comments on the analysis embodied in and the objectives defined by the White Paper, especially as it relates to Australian resources. This paper generally endorses the aspirations of the White Paper and notes that their achievement is going to require efforts and changes beyond those that are currently contemplated. It comments briefly on six things: the development context of twenty-first century Asian growth; growth and structural change in Asia and Australia's terms of trade; macroeconomic management of a resource-intensive Australian economy; restoring productivity growth; excellence in education; and linking Australia to Asian opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of Australia since the 1960s has been one of substantial economic change. One of the key drivers of this has been the growth in the importance of human capital formation and the knowledge intensification of occupations. This paper analyses the intensification of knowledge in different types of employment, over the longer term and the corresponding increase in human capital formation. In order to undertake this analysis, the O*NET measures of knowledge and Australian employment data are used to determine the degree to which human capital in Australia has changed. The paper concludes that there has been a slow but steady rise in the knowledge intensity of Australian occupations over the past thirty-five years, although not uniformly across different groups and consequent level of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia has experienced frequent and large commodity export price shocks similar to commodity exporters in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but this price volatility has had much more modest impact on economic performance. Why? This paper explores Australian terms of trade volatility since 1901. It identifies two major price shock episodes before the recent mining-led boom and bust. It assesses their relative magnitude, their impact on de-industrialisation and distribution during the booms, and the labour market and policy responses to the shocks. Australia has indeed responded differently to volatile commodity prices than have other commodity exporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period 1996/97–2001/02 was characterised by rapid economic growth and substantial structural change. This paper analyses this period in detail, relying on results from historical and decomposition simulations with the MONASH model. Changes in the level and composition of economic activity are traced to the effects of a number of government policies, external shocks, and domestic structural changes. The influence of policies such as the GST and tariff reduction proves small, with much of the change in the size and structure of economic activity attributable to technical change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia has been aggressively pursuing skilled migrants to sustain its population and foster economic growth. However, many skilled migrants experience a downward career move upon migration to Australia. Based on a survey of recent skilled migrants, this study investigates how individual (age, years of settlement, qualifications), national/societal (citizenship and settlement), and organization‐level (climate of inclusion) factors influence their career success. Overall, we found that: (1) age at migration matters more than length of settlement in predicting skilled migrant career success; (2) citizenship uptake and living in a neighbourhood with a greater number of families from the same country of origin facilitate post‐migration career success; and (3) perceptions of one's social/informal networks in the workplace – a dimension of perceived organizational climate of inclusion – also have a positive impact on migrant career outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with its competitors, Australian GDP per worker grew exceptionally quickly from the 1820s to the 1870s, at a rate about twice that of the US and three times that of Britain. Did this rapid growth produce rising inequality, following a Kuznets curve? Using a novel dataset, this article offers new evidence that provides unambiguous support for the view that, in sharp contrast with the US experience and with globalization‐inequality views concerning late nineteenth‐century frontiers, Australia underwent a revolutionary levelling in incomes up to the 1870s. This assessment is based on trends in many proxies for inequality, as well as annual estimates of functional income shares in the form of land rents, convict payments, free unskilled labour incomes, free skilled labour and white collar incomes, British imperial transfers, and a capitalist residual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses trends, updates, and outlook for the Australian economy. Topics explored include the gross domestic product (GDP), consumption, and unemployment rates recorded from 2017 to 2018, international economic developments in the U.S., Europe, and China which could impact Australia, and the contribution of non-mining business investments to Australian economic growth.

This paper builds upon the existing literature in two ways. First, the differential effects of various (economic) categories of government spending are examined in greater detail, a result of exploiting the more detailed data available for a single country. Though much reasonably comparable data are available for a large number of countries, the level of aggregation involved in cross-country comparisons is of necessity quite high and the range of variables for which data are available is limited. For example, government size is typically measured as the government's component of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), failing to reflect, for example, the impact transfer payments might have on economic performance. Second, an attempt is made to unravel the net effect of growth in government size on economic performance into the positive influence of government supplied Pigovian goods and services and the negative effects of the distortionary features of government. Although each of the authors of earlier papers recognized that total output may respond either positively or negatively to different elements of the growth in the size of government, none attempted explicitly to model and estimate the magnitude of these opposing influences. As such, much interesting information, from a policy perspective, is lost in the process of aggregation. In this paper, these advances are pursued by examining the impact of growth in government on total economic growth for the Australian economy. The model developed is a modified version of the one first presented by Feder (1983) and adapted by Ram, and it is tested using time-series data. The existence of a consistent and reasonably rich data base for Australia makes an attempt at developing evidence based on time-series data reasonable. Though considerable caution needs to be taken in interpreting the results, they nevertheless may be useful in making broad judgements on the overall patterns of the interrelationships. In the following... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the general issue of whether or not the Australian Commonwealth Government should target population size at all. Approaches to discussing the effects of population size on economic welfare; Failure of the economic theory to establish the strong linkages between population size and economic prosperity; Relationship between population size and material welfare.

This article examines the impact of the elimination of x-inefficiency in the Australian electricity supply industry using a computable genera! equilibrium (CGE) model of the Australian economy. Data envelopment analysis and a stochastic production frontier model are applied to measure x-inefficiency in the electricity industry. The potential increase in total factor productivity resulting from microeconomic reform is introduced into the CGE model as a factor-augmenting technological change. The model is used to measure the macroeconomic effects of microeconomic reform of the electricity industry. The Monash model is also used to replicate the results of earlier studies by the Industry Commission (1995) and Quiggin (1997) and thereby to provide a basis for comparing the three sets of results. The results of the current study imply that the impact of microeconomic reform on economic growth could well be significant if only a small proportion of the benefits were to be reflected in terms of an increase in aggregate employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a review of developments that take place in Australia in 1990, specially those developments involving the size and efficiency of its government and the government's intervention in the marketplace. As to the size and efficiency of government, the author claims that the reduction in size or restraint in government expenditure during the 1980s has not resulted in the sort of economic slow-down; instead the process has enhanced the country' national savings rate in the last few years. On the other hand, as to the government's intervention in the marketplace, the author also claims that the country has been one of those progressive countries that reduces barriers in foreign investment.

The article assesses the role of the Australian government in the economy of the country. The author starts the discussion by stating the role of the government lies essentially, among which, in providing an appropriate macroeconomic environment, implementing adjustment in the public sector and providing facilitation and support for development in the private sector. The government, however, has allegedly fall short as far as microeconomic adjustments are concerned. The country's domestic production has not been allegedly able to meet the demand; instead, the country has developed a classic spillover into foreign trade and a large and persistent current account deficit.

In this article we test the long-term dematerialization potential for Australia in terms of materials, energy, and water use as well as CO2 emissions by introducing concrete targets for major sectors. Major improvements in the construction and housing, transport and mobility, and food and nutrition sectors in the Australian economy, if coupled with significant reductions in the resource export sectors, would substantially improve the current material, energy, and emission intensive pattern of Australia's production and consumption system. Using the Australian Stocks and Flows Framework we model all system interactions to understand the contributions of large-scale changes in technology, infrastructure, and lifestyle to decoupling the economy from the environment. The modeling shows a considerable reduction in natural resource use, while energy and water use decrease to a much lesser extent because a reduction in natural resource consumption creates a trade-off in energy use. It also shows that trade and economic growth may continue, but at a reduced rate compared with a business-as-usual scenario. The findings of our modeling are discussed in light of the large body of literature on dematerialization, eco-efficiency, and rebound effects that may occur when efficiency is increased. We argue that Australia cannot rely on incremental efficiency gains but has to undergo a sustainability transition to achieve a low carbon future to keep in line with the international effort to avoid climate change and resource use conflicts. We touch upon the institutional changes that would be required to guide a sustainability transition in the Australian economy, such as an emission trading scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban growth is a major theme in economic development and a policy imperative for developed countries that seek to create sustainable cities. We argue that the past weighs heavily on the ability of societies to sustainably manage urban environments. The policy implications of urban history are revealed in comparisons of cities across times and between places. The special issue presents some of the best recent work on the economic and social history of Australian cities. We aim to encourage historians to incorporate urban variables into studies of historical processes and to persuade policymakers to consider historical trends in their analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay attempts to quantify and explain the economic performance of Australia from the first European settlement to the present, and beyond. A general dynamic theory—the 'dynamic-strategy' theory—has been employed to provide a new interpretation of 'dynamics Downunder'. It is shown, among other things, that the bold attempt from the 1910s to the 1960s to turn aside from the traditional development policy of exogenously driven natural-resource exploitation in order to embark on an endogenously determined dynamic process, has broken down during the course of the present generation. This was mainly due to a failure of 'strategic leadership' on the part of recent Australian governments that have, quite rightly, dismantled the framework of protection but have failed to replace it with the infrastructure of strategically relevant technological ideas. Once again Australia's economic prosperity depends heavily on the fluctuating fortunes of the global economy. While in the nineteenth century this took the form of reliance on the prosperity of Britain, today it centres on the continuing growth of Japan and China. This critical problem has been exacerbated by the misconceived policy of inflation targeting, which is damaging the central endogenous dynamic mechanism. What then of the future? It all depends on whether strategic leadership can ever be rediscovered, and a new dynamic economic strategy be adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the implications of China's rapid economic growth on the demand for energy and minerals, especially on the demand for these products imported from Australia. Since China's rapid growth is likely to continue for about another two decades, its demand for energy and minerals will expand as well. Nonetheless, as the share of manufacturing decreases, the expansion in demand for energy and minerals in China will slow over that period. While China's aggregate demand for energy and minerals will not expand as rapidly as its economy, its import needs, including imports from Australia, will increase more rapidly than its economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the sources of economic growth in Australia from 1960 to 2000 by adapting a framework developed in Jones (2002), whereby long-run growth is driven by the global discovery of new ideas, which in turn is tied to world population growth. We find that, contrary to the conventional view as suggested by sustained growth rates and a stable capital–output ratio over the last several decades, Australia is clearly not on its steady–state balanced growth path. Australia has benefited from increases in educational attainment and research intensity: 42 per cent of Australian growth between 1960 and 2000 is attributable to the rise in educational attainment, about 20 to 40 per cent is attributable to increasing research intensity, while only 10 to 30 per cent is due to long-run population growth in the idea-producing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australians’ commitment to equitable distribution means that in the twenty–first century we will have all or none of economic reform, income security, full employment and strong economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the developments that take place in education and the labor market in Australia few years before the 1990s, as well as the plan by the Australian government to maintain and further improve such developments. The author mentions freeing up the banking and financial sectors, the crucial shift to productivity-related wages bargaining, reductions in corporate taxes, elimination of the fiscal deficit, and the agenda to reduce impediments to competition and efficiency, as among the few that have been launched to improve the labor market and education. To maintain such improvement, the government has introduced the modernization of the technical and further education system across the country.

The article examines the Australian government's effort to improve its innovation process, and its influence on the economic growth and national development of the country. As explained by the author, technological innovation is found to have the capacity to regenerate the mature industries which are the core businesses of many nations. It is allegedly not just a thing that concerns with high-technology industries; rather, it also applies to the whole innovation chain reaching into production, marketing and distribution. Because of these benefits, the government has strengthened its four programs for innovation: the Management and Investment Cos. Scheme, the National Industry Extension Service, the Export Market Development Grants Scheme, and the National Procurement Development Program.

The author explains the importance of small business in the establishment of a more secured economy in Australia, and its needs that must be catered by the government in return. She emphasizes the fact that small business is the backbone of the economy; the key to investment, growth and jobs. That is what allegedly makes small business a big business. However, the country's settings have reportedly left small business over-regulated, over-taxed, under-supported and under-skilled. To address the issue, the author claims that small business must be encouraged to produce more and to grow, instead of being in a financial position that causes it to produce less and employ fewer people. Equipping small businessmen with knowledge and training with regards to their business is also mentioned.