IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/asiaps/v3y2016i2p173-186.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Australia's Productivity: Some Insights from Productivity Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Jenny Gordon

Abstract

Since the turn of the century, multifactor productivity has stagnated. Australia's income growth was supported until recent years by strong growth in the terms of trade and investment, but the terms of trade have been falling since 2011, and investment is slowing. To maintain at least the modest growth rate of the last decade, long term multifactor productivity growth needs to recover. The last decade or so has seen productivity challenges arising from natural resource depletion, as new mines were more costly to develop, and as technological replacements for environmental services, such as desalinisation plants, were increasingly introduced. Lags in the time required to bring major investments online also contributed to the poor performance. More broadly, shifts in tastes and technology have delivered quality improvements to consumers without increases in price commensurate to the additional inputs required, a trend that dampens nominal GDP growth and measured productivity.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenny Gordon, 2016. "Australia's Productivity: Some Insights from Productivity Analysis," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(2), pages 173-186, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:asiaps:v:3:y:2016:i:2:p:173-186
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/app5.137
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Commission, Productivity, 2011. "Australian’s Urban Water Sector," Inquiry Reports, Productivity Commission, Government of Australia, volume 2, number 55.
    2. Congressional Budget Office, 2011. "Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007," Reports 42729, Congressional Budget Office.
    3. Stern, David I., 2004. "The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1419-1439, August.
    4. Brent Neiman, 2014. "The Global Decline of the Labor Share," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 61-103.
    5. Garnaut,Ross, 2011. "The Garnaut Review 2011," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107691681, January.
    6. Congressional Budget Office, 2011. "Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007," Reports 42729, Congressional Budget Office.
    7. Vernon Topp & Leo Soames & Dean Parham & Harry Bloch, 2008. "Productivity in the Mining Industry: Measurement and Interpretation," Staff Working Papers 0807, Productivity Commission, Government of Australia.
    8. Productivity Commission, 2005. "Review of National Competition Policy Reforms," Others 0506004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Moses Abramovitz, 1956. "Resource and Output Trends in the United States since 1870," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number abra56-1.
    10. Tim Atkin & Mark Caputo & Tim Robinson & Hao Wang, 2014. "Australia after the Terms of Trade Boom," RBA Bulletin (Print copy discontinued), Reserve Bank of Australia, pages 55-62, March.
    11. Productivity Commission, 2004. "ICT Use and Productivity: A Synthesis from Studies of Australian Firms," Development and Comp Systems 0410005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Productivity Commission, 2005. "Review of National Competition Policy Reforms," Inquiry Reports, Productivity Commission, Government of Australia, number 33.
    13. Moses Abramovitz, 1956. "Resource and Output Trends in the United States since 1870," NBER Chapters, in: Resource and Output Trends in the United States since 1870, pages 1-23, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Congressional Budget Office, 2011. "Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007," Reports 42729, Congressional Budget Office.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elena Deskoska & Jana Vlčková, 2018. "The Role of Technological Change in Income Inequality in the United States," Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2018(1), pages 47-66.
    2. Katherine Baird, 2014. "The US Safety Net in an Era of Middle Class Decline: Has it drifted from the poor?," LIS Working papers 617, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    3. Jeffrey Thompson, 2012. "Raising Revenue from High-Income Households: Should States Continue to Place the Lowest Tax Rates on Those with the Highest Incomes?," Published Studies revenue_peri_march5, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    4. Thomas E. Lambert & Edward Kwon, 2015. "The Top One Percent and Exploitation Measures," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 47(3), pages 465-476, September.
    5. Daniele Coen‐Pirani, 2021. "Geographic Mobility And Redistribution," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 62(3), pages 921-952, August.
    6. Christoph Gorgas & Christoph A. Schaltegger, 2012. "The long run effect of taxes on the distribution of top income shares: an empirical investigation," CREMA Working Paper Series 2012-22, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    7. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Lorenz Kueng & John Silvia, 2012. "Innocent Bystanders? Monetary Policy and Inequality in the U.S," NBER Working Papers 18170, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Jonathan Fisher & David S. Johnson & Timothy M. Smeeding, 2015. "Inequality of Income and Consumption in the U.S.: Measuring the Trends in Inequality from 1984 to 2011 for the Same Individuals," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(4), pages 630-650, December.
    9. Linda McCarthy, 2015. "Something New or More of the Same in the Bidding Wars for Big Business?," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 153-171, June.
    10. Lazonick, William, 2012. "Financialization of the U.S. corporation: what has been lost, and how it can be regained," MPRA Paper 42307, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 29 Oct 2012.
    11. Wen Chen, 2018. "Cross‐Country Income Differences Revisited: Accounting for the Role of Intangible Capital," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(3), pages 626-648, September.
    12. Warshawsky, Mark, 2016. "Earnings Inequality: The Implications of the Rapidly Rising Cost of Employer-Provided Health Insurance," Working Papers 06926, George Mason University, Mercatus Center.
    13. Andrew Kliman, 2015. "The Great Recession and Marx's Crisis Theory," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(2), pages 236-277, March.
    14. Philip Armour & Richard V. Burkhauser & Jeff Larrimore, 2013. "Levels and Trends in United States Income and Its Distribution A Crosswalk from Market Income Towards a Comprehensive Haig-Simons Income Approach," NBER Working Papers 19110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Alan J. Auerbach, 2017. "Tax Reform in an Era of Budget Stress, Inequality, and International Mobility," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 153(2), pages 103-122, April.
    16. Sanders Korenman & Dahlia K. Remler & Rosemary T. Hyson, 2019. "Accounting for the Impact of Medicaid on Child Poverty," NBER Working Papers 25973, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Yolanda Kodrzycki, 2014. "Smoothing state tax revenues over the business cycle: gauging fiscal needs and opportunities," Working Papers 14-11, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    18. Philip Armour & Richard V. Burkhauser & Jeff Larrimore, 2014. "Levels and Trends in U.S. Income and its Distribution: A Crosswalk from Market Income towards a Comprehensive Haig‐Simons Income Approach," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 81(2), pages 271-293, October.
    19. Jones, C.I., 2016. "The Facts of Economic Growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 3-69, Elsevier.
    20. Robert Kaestner & Darren Lubotsky, 2016. "Health Insurance and Income Inequality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 53-78, Spring.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:asiaps:v:3:y:2016:i:2:p:173-186. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=2050-2680 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.