Book contents
- The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
- The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: connecting past, present and future
- Part 1 Framework
- Part 2 Transition
- Part 3 Economic expansion of the colonies
- Part 4 A national economy
- Part 5 Building the modern economy
- 18 Reorientation of trade, investment and migration
- 19 Microeconomic reform
- 20 The evolution of Australian macroeconomic strategy since World War 2
- Part 6 Looking backwards and to the future
- Statistical Appendix: selected data series, 1800–2010
- References
- Subject index
- Company index
20 - The evolution of Australian macroeconomic strategy since World War 2
from Part 5 - Building the modern economy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
Book contents
- The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
- The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: connecting past, present and future
- Part 1 Framework
- Part 2 Transition
- Part 3 Economic expansion of the colonies
- Part 4 A national economy
- Part 5 Building the modern economy
- 18 Reorientation of trade, investment and migration
- 19 Microeconomic reform
- 20 The evolution of Australian macroeconomic strategy since World War 2
- Part 6 Looking backwards and to the future
- Statistical Appendix: selected data series, 1800–2010
- References
- Subject index
- Company index
Summary
A country's economic strategies typically reflect its current circumstances, history and values. As Australia emerged from World War 2 its inherited economic strategy had been built around imperial preference, and population and capital flows from Britain. The focus of Australian economic strategy for the first quarter of a century after World War 2 was economic development. Australia's most serious postwar problem was expected to be inflation. By mid-1974 unemployment started to rise and there was increasing contention within the Labor government regarding both the primacy of its incompatible objectives and the means of pursuing those objectives. The 20 years since the 1991-92 recession represent the longest period of sustained economic growth since Federation, with an average annual growth rate of 3.5 per cent. Australia is even more closely integrated with the global economy and continues to rely on commodity exports and foreign capital inflows to finance a significant part of local investment.
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- The Cambridge Economic History of Australia , pp. 438 - 462Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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