Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 17:25:10 -0700 To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com From: Brad DeLong <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu>
>[speaking of Australia...]
>
><http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8408>
>
>Australian Growth: A California Perspective
>Ian W. McLean, Alan M. Taylor
>
>NBER Working Paper No. W8408
>Issued in August 2001
>
>---- Abstract -----
>
>Examination of special cases assists understanding of the mechanics
>of long-run economic growth more generally. Australia and California
>are two economies having the rare distinction of achieving 150 years
>of sustained high and rising living standards for rapidly expanding
>populations. They are suitable comparators since in some respects
>they are quite similar, especially in their initial conditions in
>the mid-nineteenth century, their legal and cultural inheritances,
>and with respect to some long-term performance indicators. However,
>their growth trajectories have differed markedly in some
>sub-periods, and over the longer term with respect to the growth in
>the size of their economies. Most important, the comparison of an
>economy that remained a region in a much larger national economy
>with one that evolved into an independent political unit helps
>identify the role of several key policies. California had no
>independent monetary policy, or exchange rate, or controls over
>immigration or capital movements, or trade policy. Australia did,
>and after 1900 pursued an increasingly interventionist and
>inward-oriented development strategy until the 1970s. What
>difference did this make to long-run growth? And what other factors,
>exogenous and endogenous, account for the differences that have
>emerged between two economies that shared such similar initial
>conditions?
Yes. But this is a "teaser" abstract...
Brad DeLong