The Workshop is to review progress on the project to develop the first Cambridge Economic History of Australia. The Cambridge Economic History of Australia is intended both for class-room use and to inform researchers, but also to reach policy makers through understanding and assessment of the Australian economic achievement and the policy settings that have led to the current economic outcomes and how they might need to be reconfigured for the future.

The distinctive dimension of the project is understand the present from past evolution, and to examine the conditions for future advancement. Implications for policy settings and potentially for a new “narrative” for Australian self-understanding are to be derived.

The workshop presentations and syndicate discussions will be on a thematic and period basis, providing peer feedback to all contributors, with all discussion recorded and reported and emerging themes distilled for further development.

The topics to be covered during the workshop are as follows:

Part 1. Framework

  • 1. 1.The Historiography of Australian Economic History
  • 2. 2. Economic Growth and Its Drivers
  • 3. 3. Models and Frameworks of Economic Development

Part 2. Transition

  • 1. 4. The Aboriginal Legacy
  • 2. 5. The Convict Economy
  • 3. 6. Regional Differentiation among the Australasian Colonies

Part 3. Economic Expansion of the Colonies

  • 1. 7. Natural resource industries
  • 2. 8. Labour, Skills and Migration
  • 3. 9. Business Investment, Innovation and Organisation
  • 4. 10. Infrastructure and colonial socialism
  • 5. 11. Urbanisation

Part 4. A National Economy

  • 1. 12. Capital markets
  • 2. 13. Manufacturing
  • 3. 14. Big business and foreign enterprise
  • 4. 15. Government and the Evolution of Economic Policy
  • 5. 16. Labour markets
  • 6. 17. The Service Economy

Part 5. Globalisation, Regional Engagement and Deregulation

  • 1. 18. Reorientation of trade, investment, migration
  • 2. 19. Deregulation and Microeconomic Efficiency
  • 3. 20. Postwar Economic Strategy

Part 6. Looking back, impacts

  • 1. 25. The Traditional Owners
  • Statistical sources
Last updated : 28/02/2013 | |