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2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

14. Agricultural Development in Australia: 1845–2015

Author : Kym Anderson

Published in: Agricultural Development in the World Periphery

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Chapter 14 examines the extent to which agricultural sector developments in the Australian economy can be understood using international trade theory, awareness of several major mining booms and knowledge of key policy developments. It suggests those developments are not inconsistent with theory, but it also reveals several features that make Australia’s economy unusual. The most striking are the facts that the agricultural sector’s share of GDP remained fairly constant rather than falling during 1860–1960, even during the latest mining boom, and that the farm sector continued to enjoy a strong comparative advantage despite periodic spurts of growth in mining exports.

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previous chapter The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs? Agricultural Development in Latin America in the 20th Century

next chapter From Backwardness to Global Agricultural Powerhouse: The Transition of Brazilian Agriculture

National income is less likely to rise, the poorer the government’s macroeconomic management and the more distorting are its sectoral and trade policies (Anderson, 1998). Adverse outcomes are so common among developing countries as to have given rise to the term “resource curse” (coined by Auty, 1993). Extensive reviews of that literature as it pertains to developing countries can be found in Smith (2015) and Venables (2016). See also Badía-Miró, Pinilla, & Willebald (2015).

It leaves aside the question of how these structural changes and shocks contributed to the growth and fluctuations in the country’s aggregate output, employment, and income. The reasons for high per-capita income in Australia in the nineteenth century, and continued prosperity to date, is the subject of a study by McLean (2013).

See also Willebald & Juambeltz (2018), Chap. 17.

Historical macroeconomic and sectoral data on Australia’s economy have been compiled by Vanplew (1987), and a subset of those data has been updated by Butlin, Dixon, & Lloyd (2014). Anderson (2015) has extended some of those series (and added the colonial/state data) by drawing on, among others, Butlin & Sinclair (1986), Sinclair (2009) and the Statistical Registers of each Colony.

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Title: Agricultural Development in Australia: 1845–2015
Author: Kym Anderson
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Agricultural Development in the World Periphery
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-66019-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-66020-2

Copyright Year: 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66020-2_14

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