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Tariffs, Subsidies And Profits: A Re-Assessment Of Structural Change In Australia 1901-1939, David Merrett, Simon Ville

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper offers a re-interpretation of the drivers of structural change in Australia from federation until the outbreak of World War II. The broad story of structural change is that manufacturing increased its relative share of both output and employment while the share of the farm sector and mining contracted. The large tertiary sector, including construction, oscillated around its mean. The conventional wisdom is that these shifts were largely the result of government policy, particularly the increase in trade barriers that stimulated import substitution by manufacturers. However, if the unit of analysis is the firm rather than the economy then …