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The focus in this paper is to identify characteristics which distinguish enterprises of operators who sold wool privately from those who sold at auction. The "t" tests on differences in means revealed that private sales tend to be associated with small woolproducing enterprises. In Western Australia, the further removed enterprises are from an auction selling centre the lower the probability of a private sale. In the Eastern States, the probability of a private sale was higher during the period of supply management in 1974-75, the average level of indebtedness to pastoral companies was lower for those enterprises from which wool was sold privately and traditional ties to wool selling brokers were apparently important in the 1974-75 wool selling season, although the importance of this factor diminished in 1975-76.

The deployment of resources off the farm constitutes an important aspect of resource use in Australian agriculture. The aims in this paper are to document the nature and extent of off-farm employment and investment in the Australian grazing industry, to undertake an analysis to identify the factors important in determining both the type of off-farm employment undertaken by operators and the off-farm employment-investment strategy chosen by the farm family, and to present farmers' reasons given for undertaking off-farm employment and investment. Off-farm employment and off-farm investment were found to be widespread in the Australian grazing industry, with the majority of farm families receiving some income from off-farm sources. In addition to the relative incomes earned from farm and off-farm sources, human capital, family structure and the life cycle stage and some non-pecuniary influences were found to be important in determining the type of off-farm resources deployment undertaken, particularly with respect to off-farm employment. Many farmers were found to view off-farm employment and off-farm investment as efficient and profitable alternatives to the allocation of all resources to farm activities.

Off-farm employment has become increasingly important as an aspect of resource adjustment and a source of income in Australian agriculture. However, it is surprising that there is a paucity of work on this topic reported in the agricultural economics literature. Therefore, we have drawn upon recent developments in labour economics in order to investigate off-farm employment in Australia. A conceptual model of the allocation of a farmer's labour between farm and off-farm work is developed and applied to cross-sectional data from the Australian Agricultural and Grazing Industries Survey. A Tobit maximum likelihood procedure is utilised to test the influences of the life cycle, level of human capital, wealth, non-wage income and farm income on the off-farm labour supply of farmers.