IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/b/pup/pbooks/9897.html
   My bibliography  Save this book

Why Australia Prospered: The Shifting Sources of Economic Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Ian W. McLean

    (University of Adelaide)

Abstract

This book is the first comprehensive account of how Australia attained the world's highest living standards within a few decades of European settlement, and how the nation has sustained an enviable level of income to the present. Beginning with the Aboriginal economy at the end of the eighteenth century, Ian McLean argues that Australia's remarkable prosperity across nearly two centuries was reached and maintained by several shifting factors. These included imperial policies, favorable demographic characteristics, natural resource abundance, institutional adaptability and innovation, and growth-enhancing policy responses to major economic shocks, such as war, depression, and resource discoveries. Natural resource abundance in Australia played a prominent role in some periods and faded during others, but overall, and contrary to the conventional view of economists, it was a blessing rather than a curse. McLean shows that Australia's location was not a hindrance when the international economy was centered in the North Atlantic, and became a positive influence following Asia's modernization. Participation in the world trading system, when it flourished, brought significant benefits, and during the interwar period when it did not, Australia's protection of domestic manufacturing did not significantly stall growth. McLean also considers how the country's notorious origins as a convict settlement positively influenced early productivity levels, and how British imperial policies enhanced prosperity during the colonial period. He looks at Australia's recent resource-based prosperity in historical perspective, and reveals striking elements of continuity that have underpinned the evolution of the country's economy since the nineteenth century.

Suggested Citation

  • Ian W. McLean, 2012. "Why Australia Prospered: The Shifting Sources of Economic Growth," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9897.
  • Handle: RePEc:pup:pbooks:9897
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Geoffrey T. F. Brooke & Anthony M. Endres & Alan J. Rogers, 2016. "The Economists and New Zealand Population: Problems and Policies 1900–1980s," Working Papers 2016-08, Auckland University of Technology, Department of Economics.
    2. Rajabrata Banerjee & John K. Wilson, 2016. "Roles of Education in Productivity Growth in Australia, 1860–1939," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 92(296), pages 47-66, March.
    3. Hatton, Timothy J., 2024. "The political economy of assisted immigration: Australia 1860–1913," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    4. Philip Chindamo & Vance L. Martin, 2022. "The Dynamics of Structural Transformation in Australia, 1960–2020," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 98(322), pages 296-315, September.
    5. Abel Gwaindepi, 2022. "Fiscal capacity in ‘‘responsible government’’ colonies: the Cape Colony in comparative perspective, c. 1865–1910 [The spread of empire: Clio and the measurement of colonial borrowing costs]," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 26(3), pages 340-369.
    6. Pauline Grosjean & Rose Khattar, 2014. "It's Raining Men! Hallelujah?," Discussion Papers 2014-29C, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    7. Ben Huf, 2021. "Making Things Economic: Theory and Government in New South Wales, 1788–1863," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(1), pages 117-125, March.
    8. Kris Ivanovski & Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & John Inekwe, 2020. "Convergence in Income Inequality Across Australian States and Territories," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 148(1), pages 127-142, February.
    9. Pauline Grosjean & Rose Khattar, 2014. "It's Raining Men! Hallelujah?," Discussion Papers 2014-29, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.

    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:pup:pbooks:9897. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://press.princeton.edu .

    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.