Can Australia Match US Productivity Performance?

Policies to support sustainable long-term growth in New Zealand

“…Good policies can nonetheless help counter New Zealand's geographic obstacles, and indeed the long-run deterioration in relative per capita incomes came to an end following the significant structural reforms of the 1980s and early 1990s (McCann, 2009). Strong institutional settings may explain the finding that both Australia and New Zealand perform better than predicted, given their distance to markets (Dolman et al, 2007). Nevertheless, bad geography argues for the need to have particularly strong structural policies, especially as isolation may reduce the returns to structural and institutional reform (Gallup and Sachs, 1999).…”

What Happened to Australia's Productivity Surge?

“…This process might deliver large gains in productivity, but only very slowly. Australia's potential to catch up to the international productivity frontier might be limited because much of the remaining gap is due to industries—manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade—in which international convergence historically has been weak (Dolman, Parham and Zheng 2007). Moreover, policy reforms explain only part of the convergence process.…”

Dynamic Gains and Market Access Insurance: Another Look at the Australia–US Free Trade Agreement

“…Will such capital accumulation tend to raise or lower the level of human capital in the economy? This is an important issue in the Australian context where the skill level of the labour force is low relative, to say, the United States and skills shortages are thought to be a brake on the growth rate (see, for example, Dolman, Parham and Zheng 2007; Coelli and Wilkins 2008).…”