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Agricultural Development in Australia: 1845–2015

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Agricultural Development in the World Periphery

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

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.

Thanks are due to the editors and reviewers for critical comments. This chapter draws heavily on Anderson (2017).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    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).

  2. 2.

    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).

  3. 3.

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

  4. 4.

    Gold (not shown) contributed more than meat to New Zealand ’s exports prior to the 1880s. Argentina’s exports also were highly concentrated on two products: wool and hides to the 1880s and wool and grain from then to WWI. Livestock products accounted for between 75 per cent and 90 per cent of Uruguay ’s exports right up to 1970.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Adelaide and Australian National University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Kym Anderson

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  1. Kym Anderson
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  1. Department of Applied Economics and Economic History, Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

    Vicente Pinilla

  2. Department of Economics, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay

    Henry Willebald

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Anderson, K. (2018). Agricultural Development in Australia: 1845–2015. In: Pinilla, V., Willebald, H. (eds) Agricultural Development in the World Periphery. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66020-2_14

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