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What Happened to Australia's Productivity Surge?
Author(s) -
Dolman Ben
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
australian economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-8462
pISSN - 0004-9018
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8462.2009.00556.x
Subject(s) - productivity , slowdown , profitability index , economics , point (geometry) , surge , quality (philosophy) , labour economics , agricultural economics , macroeconomics , economic growth , geography , finance , philosophy , geometry , mathematics , epistemology , meteorology
Australia's productivity has grown 1 percentage point per year slower in the current decade than in the 1990s. This article shows that almost one‐half of the slowdown is related to unusual developments in the mining industry, the effects of drought and the overstatement of productivity growth in the 1990s. Part of the remainder might be as a result of a combination of slower technological change, unmeasured declines in labour quality, the diminishing effects of past reforms and the increasing profitability of Australian firms.