Most recent papers:

• Political economy, market structure, and the early modern Pacific trade: Another look at transpacific silver flows.
  Juan Jose Rivas Moreno.
  Australian Economic History Review. 2 days ago
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nThe crucial role that the early modern Pacific trade played as a source of silver for Asian economies has resulted in multiple attempts to estimate its monetary value. However, the political economy of Spanish commerce casts doubts on the reliability of existing sources and has resulted in great variation among historians' estimates. This article presents a critical review of the existing estimates together with previously unused evidence of Manila's capital market, arguing that revisionist estimates of 50–100 annual tons of coined silver reflect more accurately the volume of the trade between 1680 and 1815.\n"]

  May 08, 2026   doi: 10.1111/aehr.70031   open full text
• Running towards: Labour market incentives for runaway slaves in the British Cape Colony, 1830–1838.
  Karl Bergemann, Gabriel Brown, Johan Fourie.
  Australian Economic History Review. 3 days ago
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nRecent scholarship on slave escapes has increasingly emphasised economic motivation, but few studies have empirically investigated how market incentives influenced the decision‐making of enslaved individuals during transitions from coerced to wage labour. This paper fills that gap by exploring whether runaway slaves at the British Cape Colony were driven by the desire to improve their labour market opportunities as slavery gave way to emancipation. To answer this question, we construct a novel dataset of 689 runaway advertisements published between 1830 and 1838, drawn from two major colonial newspapers, and link these records to individual‐level valuations compiled at the time of de jure emancipation in December 1834. Using both difference‐in‐differences and regression discontinuity in time analyses, we find that escapes increased markedly among higher‐valued, more productive enslaved individuals immediately after de jure emancipation, rising by over 100% relative to the pre‐emancipation average. These escape attempts gradually declined, however, as de facto emancipation approached in 1838. Our results suggest that enslaved individuals responded rationally to shifts in labour market conditions, challenging the conventional view of escape as solely a reaction to harsh treatment. By quantifying the relationship between institutional change and labour coercion, this paper contributes directly to theoretical debates on how market incentives shape behaviour under conditions of economic unfreedom.\n"]

  May 07, 2026   doi: 10.1111/aehr.70034   open full text
• The currency of femininity: Earning, spending and saving among office girls in post‐war New Zealand.
  Sarah Christie.
  Australian Economic History Review. 10 days ago
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article examines how post‐war clerical work shaped young New Zealand women's financial and social modernity. It explores how earning a ‘wage of one's own’ enabled women to perform modern femininity while negotiating ideals of glamour, thrift, and respectability. Drawing on women's magazines, bank archives, and oral histories, it analyses the figure of the ‘glamorous business girl’, whose body functioned as both spectacle and currency within the office. Through dressmaking, saving, and travel, women channelled their wages into self‐fashioning and aspiration, revealing how economic practice, display, and mobility intertwined to redefine post‐war femininity and agency.\n"]

  April 30, 2026   doi: 10.1111/aehr.70033   open full text
• Women's land ownership in Victoria, 1880–1930: Contributions to a fuller picture.
  Kathryn M. Hunter.
  Australian Economic History Review. 10 days ago
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nResponding to calls for more research on Australian women's property ownership this article draws on underutilised shire rate books. The data challenge stubborn historiographical assumptions that women's land ownership in federation‐era Victoria was insignificant. A systematic analysis of rate books from five rural Victorian shires between 1880 and 1930, reveals white women as a substantial and growing proportion of rural landowners, peaking around 1920. Despite disconnection between bureaucratic representations of women as engaged only in ‘home duties’ and their actual economic activity, women's land ownership increased substantially in these decades, revealing their stable and enduring presence in Victoria's rural economy.\n"]

  April 30, 2026   doi: 10.1111/aehr.70035   open full text
• Public virtue, private ambition—Women owners of private hospitals in early twentieth‐century New Zealand.
  Ann‐Marie Quinn.
  Australian Economic History Review. 11 days ago
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nNew Zealand's early‐twentieth‐century health service was a two‐tier system of state hospitals supported by an expanding network of over 300 private hospitals, almost exclusively owned by nurses and midwives. This article will show that this environment was created by a legislative framework introduced between 1901 and 1906, requiring nurses, midwives, and their private hospitals to be registered, licensed, and monitored. Stringent regulation could have stifled the industry. Instead, it provided fertile ground on which many women flourished as enterprising businesswomen who made significant contributions to their communities, breaking with traditional notions of nurses solely as carers and handmaidens to doctors.\n"]

  April 29, 2026   doi: 10.1111/aehr.70032   open full text
• How did Japan catch‐up with the West? Some implications of recent revisions to Japan's historical growth record.
  Stephen Broadberry, Kyoji Fukao, Tokihiko Settsu.
  Australian Economic History Review. March 16, 2026
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, Volume 66, Issue 1, Page 3-32, March 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nRevised GDP data suggest that Japan was more than one‐third richer in 1874 than suggested by Maddison, and that Meiji period growth built on earlier development. Despite trend GDP per capita growth during the Tokugawa Shogunate, the catching‐up process only started after 1890 with respect to Britain, and after World War I with respect to the United States. Although catching‐up was driven by productivity growth in manufacturing, Japanese export success also depended on limiting the growth of real wages. Despite claims of a distinctive Asian path of labour‐intensive industrialisation, capital played an important role in the catching‐up process.\n"]

  March 16, 2026   doi: 10.1111/aehr.70012   open full text
• Economic trends in Qing China: A response to Rawski's bold claims.
  Stephen Broadberry, Hanhui Guan, David Daokui Li.
  Australian Economic History Review. March 16, 2026
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, Volume 66, Issue 1, Page 99-116, March 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nThomas Rawski challenges recent quantitative studies that find declining Chinese GDP per capita during 1700–1850 and suggests that the error margins around the component series for per capita grain supply should be widened, which would make it possible to accommodate stagnation, growth or decline. We show that there are good reasons to reject Rawski's wider error margins. We also reject Rawski's claim that there has previously been a consensus view of eighteenth‐century Qing prosperity and demonstrate that trends in the other variables examined by Rawski tend to support declining per capita grain supply.\n"]

  March 16, 2026   doi: 10.1111/aehr.70019   open full text
• The lascars' kettle: Lascar sailors on voyages to Australia and New Zealand in the late eighteenth century.
  Jennifer Ashton.
  Australian Economic History Review. March 16, 2026
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, Volume 66, Issue 1, Page 81-98, March 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nBetween 1793 and 1796, three inter‐related sailing voyages took place around the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. On board each of these voyages were lascar sailors drawn from the Indian Ocean. This article looks at the experience of these sailors and considers how the racial hierarchies present on each of the voyages were sustained or challenged during times of crisis. In particular, it considers how co‐operation might be a productive frame through which to examine on‐board relationships between lascars and European crew and officers.\n"]

  March 16, 2026   doi: 10.1111/aehr.70021   open full text
• Monetary integration and purchasing power parity between Singapore and Britain during the 19th century.
  Atsushi Kobayashi.
  Australian Economic History Review. March 16, 2026
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, Volume 66, Issue 1, Page 33-57, March 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nThis study examines the development of purchasing power parity between Singapore and Britain during the 19th century. Using new monthly data from 1831 to 1872, it finds that real exchange rates became more stable after the late 1850s. This convergence was supported by growing connections in international bullion markets, which reduced exchange rate fluctuations and aligned price levels. The findings highlight how monetary adjustments between silver‐based Singapore and gold‐standard Britain promoted long‐run equilibrium. By applying historical price indices and bilateral exchange data, the study offers new insights into how external imbalances were managed in Asia before the global adoption of the gold standard.\n"]

  March 16, 2026   doi: 10.1111/aehr.70020   open full text
• Fugitive or orphan? The Shanghai yen in the early days of the Sino‐Japanese war, 1938–1939.
  Shinji Takagi.
  Australian Economic History Review. March 16, 2026
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, Volume 66, Issue 1, Page 58-80, March 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nWe explore a phenomenon observed during the Second Sino‐Japanese War in which the value of the yen in Shanghai fell below the official rate. Shanghai provided a parallel market in which yen could be traded indirectly against British pounds through the intermediation of the Chinese yuan. The implied yen–pound rate was broadly approximated by purchasing power parity (PPP) before a significant divergence from PPP emerged in favour of the pound. This likely reflected negative news that signalled, among other things, a prospective withdrawal of Japanese yen as occupation money, which meant that the parallel market would close.\n"]

  March 16, 2026   doi: 10.1111/aehr.70027   open full text
• Faith, gender and financial investment: Providence and Presbyterianism in Scotland and abroad.
  Jennifer Jones, Susan Poole.
  Australian Economic History Review. June 23, 2025
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nMid‐nineteenth century fictional representations of misdirected investment by widows and clergy position them as ignorant in financial matters and hence pitiable. While scholars have recognised female agency in nineteenth century commerce, insufficient attention has been paid to religious belief in financial decision‐making. By examining the link between investment and Providentialism, through the lived experience of the ‘widow, the clergyman and the reckless’, this article demonstrates that both men and women attributed success and failure to God's Providence. This examination of investment decisions by religious Scots suggests that market loss was measured in entwined moral and economic terms.\n"]

  June 23, 2025   doi: 10.1111/aehr.70007   open full text
• Caste criminalisation in South India and permanent migration to Fiji, 1903–1927.
  Alexander Persaud.
  Australian Economic History Review. January 14, 2025
  ["Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nDoes the official criminalisation of a group lead to permanent out‐migration? In the early 20th century, British officials in south India designated multiple castes as inherently criminal under the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA). The CTA required police registration and could force entire groups into special settlements. Utilising unique, individual‐level administrative data on all south Indian indentured labourers in Fiji, I analyse criminalisation's effects on return migration. Members of criminalised castes returned to India less even when offered free repatriation, with a statistically and economically significant fall of 18%. My results show the impact of policies of criminalisation on migration.\n"]

  January 14, 2025   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12306   open full text
• Convict Transportation to New South Wales, 1787–1849: Mortality Rates Reconsidered.
  Gary L. Sturgess, Sara Rahman, George Argyrous.
  Australian Economic History Review. August 06, 2017
  Previous research into Australian convict transportation has concluded that a significant downturn in mortality rates occurred with the appointment of naval surgeons as superintendents in 1815. Statistical analysis of convict ships sent to New South Wales between 1787 and 1849 shows a more significant downturn occurred in 1800, following the introduction of closer supervision of ships' surgeons. The contracting system established by the Navy Board in 1786 for the transportation of convicts to New South Wales could be made to work as long as government maintained an effective system of inspection and supervision.

  August 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12137   open full text
• The Long‐Term Consequences of Cultural Distance on Migration: Historical Evidence from China.
  Nan Li.
  Australian Economic History Review. August 06, 2017
  This paper uses a unique dataset of long‐run migration in China to provide new measures of cultural distance based on biological evidence. We utilise this information to examine the effect of cultural distance on migration in China from the Song Dynasty until the twentieth century. Our findings show that culture has strong effects on migration between regions when controlling for other socio‐economic and geographical factors. Population flow is greater where there are fewer cultural differences. This finding not only provides quantitative empirical evidence on linking cultural distance and migration but also leads to a better understanding of the mechanisms resulting in migration for much of China's history.

  August 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12134   open full text
• Was It Possible to Stabilise the Price of Wool? Organised Wool Marketing 1916 to 1970.
  Malcolm Abbott, David Merrett.
  Australian Economic History Review. August 01, 2017
  Wool is the only Australian commodity for which there has been an attempt to organise price stability through a buffer stock scheme (1970–91). Growers pressed for the introduction of a scheme since the early 1920s. We test the veracity of claims that the sale of the stockpiles optimised growers' returns. We also simulate the likely outcomes of the reserve price schemes (RPS) proposed in 1925 and 1952, respectively. Our findings are that post‐war stockpile disposals did not optimise wool growers' incomes, the undercapitalised proposed RPS of the 1920s would have collapsed in the depression, and that the post‐1952 RPS would have been in considerable difficulty.

  August 01, 2017   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12136   open full text
• Colonial Taiwan's Financial Revolution.
  Kelly Barton Olds.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 27, 2017
  Under imperial Japanese rule, Taiwan experienced a relatively high rate of economic growth, and this growth is often attributed to well‐planned development policies. This paper argues that Taiwan's success was primarily due to the glut of money that flowed into the Japanese Empire during World War One. Taiwanese had suffered from limited access to credit, but, during the war, the Japanese‐controlled Bank of Taiwan had to find an outlet for the huge inflow of funds and greatly expanded lending to native Taiwanese. This unscripted experiment was a success, and continued access to formal capital markets allowed Taiwanese agriculture to takeoff.

  July 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12133   open full text
• Exchange Rates and Economic Recovery in the 1930s: An Extension to Asia.
  Chien‐Jung Ting, Tai‐Kuang Ho.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 27, 2017
  Scholars have found a positive relationship between the magnitude of currency depreciation and the extent of recovery from the Great Depression for Europe and Latin America. The relationship between currency depreciation and economic activity during the Great Depression for Asian economies has not yet been explored. This paper examines this topic using data from 13 Asian economies: China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam. We find that Asian economies responded in a similar way to currency depreciation during the Great Depression as did European and Latin American countries.

  July 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12135   open full text
• Australia's Bankrupt Chinese Furniture Manufacturers, 1880–1930.
  Peter Gibson.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 27, 2017
  The proprietors of almost 100 Chinese furniture factories in Australia went bankrupt during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With a substantial stake in furniture production for decades following the gold rushes of the 1850s and 1860s, Chinese furniture factory operators were vilified and legislated against in a push for ‘White‐Australian’ industrial advancement. Historians have consistently concentrated on such campaigns when explaining Chinese‐Australian business failures of this period. Yet informed principally by their bankruptcy court testimony, this paper contends that Chinese furniture manufacturers went bankrupt largely because of economic difficulties and, thus, failures are not sufficiently explained by ‘White Australia’.

  July 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12131   open full text
• Stadiums and Scheduling: Measuring Deadweight Losses in the Victorian Football League, 1920–70.
  Lionel Frost, Luc Borrowman, Abdel K. Halabi.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 26, 2017
  Over a 50 year period, Australian Rules football's major league, the Victorian Football League, did not always use its largest and best‐equipped stadium for regular season games between its most popular teams or schedule those teams to play twice in a regular season. We calculate deadweight losses from the use of capital goods (stadiums) and effects of match scheduling in this professional sports league. Such analysis has not been attempted previously because of the absence of a counterfactual. The welfare losses were significant but not sufficient to threaten the survival of a distance‐protected cartel.

  July 26, 2017   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12132   open full text
• Alfred Marshall, Silver, and China.
  Liuyan Zhao, Yan Zhao.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 26, 2017
  The paper provides an empirical investigation of Alfred Marshall's analysis of the silver flow mechanism between the West and the East, which maintains that silver will flow whenever there is a difference in its purchasing power. The results show that Marshall's analysis offers an empirically sound interpretation of changes in the price level in China and the silver flow across China's borders. The results also confirm that there was a high degree of international integration for China's internal and external prices of silver. Moreover, the stable purchasing power parity could in practice be maintained by silver flow without resorting to a substantial percentage of tradable goods.

  July 26, 2017   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12138   open full text
• Sectoral Trends and Shocks in Australia's Economic Growth.
  Kym Anderson.
  Australian Economic History Review. March 05, 2017
  This paper examines the extent to which sectoral trends and fluctuations in the Australian economy can be understood using international trade theory and knowledge of key policy developments. It suggests they are consistent with theory, but it also reveals several features that make Australia's economy unusual. The most striking are the facts that (i) the agricultural sector's share of GDP remained fairly constant rather than falling during 1860–1960 and even during the latest mining boom; and (ii) the farm sector continued to enjoy a strong comparative advantage despite periodic spurts of growth in mining exports.

  March 05, 2017   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12130   open full text
• Chinese National Income, ca. 1661–1933.
  Yi Xu, Zhihong Shi, Bas Leeuwen, Yuping Ni, Zipeng Zhang, Ye Ma.
  Australian Economic History Review. December 28, 2016
  In recent decades, national income has become increasingly important as a measure of a nation's economic health. In this study, we used a wide array of primary and secondary sources to arrive at values of the Chinese per capita gross domestic product during the period of 1661–1933. We found a persistent decline in the per capita gross domestic product between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, followed by a period of stagnation. This pattern, which shows up in many Asian countries, with the exception of Japan, provides a basis for improving our understanding of the patterns of global economic convergence and divergence.

  December 28, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12127   open full text
• British Capital and Merchandise Exports, 1870–1913: The Bilateral Case of New Zealand.
  Brian D. Varian.
  Australian Economic History Review. November 17, 2016
  The Ford thesis argued that there was a short‐term causal relationship between British overseas investment and British merchandise exports in the late nineteenth century. However, economic historians since Ford have found little empirical evidence in support of this argument. Using data on bilateral British lending, this article finds that such a relationship did exist, with British ex ante lending preceding merchandise exports by 2 years. A case study of New Zealand, which had an extraordinarily high share of Britain in its imports, reveals that the relationship was conditional upon the lending being allocated to social overhead capital.

  November 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12128   open full text
• Converging Mainlander and Native Taiwanese, 1949–2012.
  Yu Hao.
  Australian Economic History Review. August 12, 2016
  This paper uses a surname‐based methodology to estimate the intergenerational correlation between native Taiwanese and mainlanders during 1949–2012. It finds that mainlanders, who initially had an advantage in higher education and high profile occupations, regressed towards population average at a relatively constant rate, which is much higher than suggested by previous studies. This paper argues that the difference either reflects a group‐level inequality because of the impacts of kinships and extended families, or it measures the intergenerational correlation of an unobservable variable, the true underlying social status, which is imperfectly correlated with income, education, or occupation at the individual level.

  August 12, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12112   open full text
• A Comparison of Market Integration in Nineteenth‐Century China and Japan.
  Ke Yao, Xiao‐Ping Zheng.
  Australian Economic History Review. August 12, 2016
  This paper performs a cointegration analysis using an Error Correction Model (ECM) on annual rice prices to measure and compare market integration in China and Japan during the nineteenth century. We find markets in Japan were more integrated than in China at both the regional and national levels during the period. Moreover, market integration in Japan improved during industrialisation. These findings support the view that a well‐integrated market is a cause as well as a result of economic growth.

  August 12, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12109   open full text
• The Rise and Fall of Exceptional Australian Incomes Since 1800.
  David Greasley, Jakob B. Madsen.
  Australian Economic History Review. August 04, 2016
  We gauge how productivity and factor endowments shaped the rise and fall of Australia's exceptional incomes using new measures of total factor productivity (TFP), which include natural resource inputs, in an accounting of income growth. Further, we explore the drivers of TFP growth. Pastoralism and mining had negative TFP externalities, and we incorporate these findings into a unified accounting of incomes, which distinguishes the roles of endowments and productivity. Nevertheless, TFP growth played an important role in promoting exceptional incomes between 1842 and 1890. Our findings favour a more balanced interpretation of Australian growth that has roles for natural resources, labour participation, and productivity.

  August 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12111   open full text
• Price Fluctuations and Growth Patterns in Singapore's Trade, 1831–1913.
  Atsushi Kobayashi.
  Australian Economic History Review. August 02, 2016
  Using a newly created trade price index, this paper determines the real growth rate of Singapore's trade during 1831–1913. We find that Singapore's trade grew between 1831 and 1873 at a higher rate than during the later period. An analysis of the terms of trade and purchasing power parity reveals that the growth pattern of Singapore's entrepôt trade changed after 1850 from growth fuelled by transit trade of industrial products to balanced growth between regional imports and exports. This change resulted from the operation of the international monetary system, which enhanced market integration between Britain and Southeast Asia via Singapore.

  August 02, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12113   open full text
• Absorptive Capacity, International Business Knowledge Transfer, and Local Adaptation: Establishing Discount Department Stores in Australia.
  Matthew Bailey.
  Australian Economic History Review. August 01, 2016
  This article examines the ways that Australia's largest retail firms accessed and adapted external knowledge flows, largely from the USA, to develop discount department store chains from the late‐1960s onwards. In doing so, it extends work on retail internationalisation by focusing on the importation, rather than the exportation of business models. The three firms – Coles, Myer and Woolworths – exhibited differing degrees of absorptive capacity in identifying and commercialising knowledge flows. This was reflected in fluctuating levels of success, the scope of store networks and relative positioning in the Australian market. Further, the role played by informal associations between managers in non‐competing firms in different markets during the development of discount department stores in Australia advances the case for socialising analyses of business knowledge transfer more broadly.

  August 01, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12107   open full text
• European Integration and Australian Manufacturing Industry: The Case of Philips Electronics, 1960s–1970s.
  Pierre Eng.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 12, 2016
  The creation of the Common Market in the European Community required electronics multinational Philips to integrate production operations across European countries. This effort had consequences for its Australian subsidiary. Rather than become a regional Philips hub with the support of its parent, as intended in the 1960s, it was absorbed by addressing changes in Australian trade policy and increased Japanese imports. The parent company's establishment of regional supply centres in Europe and Asia left no role for the small Australian production facilities in the company's global structure. Production and employment at Philips Australia were scaled back drastically during the 1970s.

  July 12, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12103   open full text
• The First 100 Years of Tariffs in Australia: the Colonies.
  Peter Lloyd.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 07, 2016
  This paper reviews the history of tariffs imposed by the six Australian colonies during the nineteenth century. In each of the colonies, we identify the starting dates for the first tariffs, first preferences, and other features, and the turning points in the levels of tariffs. We then construct a time series of the average tariff levels in the individual colonies and an average for all six colonies combined. The conclusion notes general features of the pattern of tariffs and how the main features of colonial tariffs, such as the favourable treatment of intermediate inputs, the complex differentiation of tariff rates within industries, and the protection implicit in the excise tax system all carried over to the Commonwealth Customs Tariff in the twentieth century.

  July 07, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12104   open full text
• Uniform Service, Uniform Productivity? Regional Efficiency of the Imperial German Postal, Telegraph, and Telephone Service.
  Florian Ploeckl.
  Australian Economic History Review. June 20, 2016
  Using the regional productivity of the Reichspost, the postal service of the German Empire, I investigate whether a public monopolist operates with uniform regional productivity. Using data envelopment analysis efficiency scores, we derive the relative productivity of the post, telegraph, and telephone sectors from 1891 to 1908. Results show a fairly stable system with substantial raw productivity differences between postal districts, and that the expansion of the service offset technological productivity increases for the mail service.

  June 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12099   open full text
• The Contribution of Wheat to Australian Agriculture from 1861 to 1939.
  Rajabrata Banerjee, Martin Shanahan.
  Australian Economic History Review. June 13, 2016
  The influence of agriculture on Australia's nineteenth and twentieth century economic development is well known. While wool's contribution is rightly celebrated, the contribution of agricultural crops has received less attention. This paper focuses on one major staple, wheat, from 1861 to 1939. Both patent data and a new measure of technological progress, the cumulative number of wheat varieties tested for local adoption, are used to quantify the contribution of agricultural innovation to growth. We find innovation in this sector made an important contribution to the growth of total factor productivity over the period.

  June 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12102   open full text
• A Tale of Two Tails: Establishment Size and Labour Productivity in United States and German Manufacturing at the Start of the Twentieth Century.
  Joost Veenstra, Herman Jong.
  Australian Economic History Review. June 13, 2016
  This paper studies the importance of establishment size for the German/US labour‐productivity gap in manufacturing at the start of the twentieth century. First, we show that the left tail of the employment distribution by establishment size was larger in Germany than in the USA. Second, using US state data for 1909, we find a positive correlation between establishment size and labour productivity. Third, imposing the coefficients of these estimates on establishment‐size differences between Germany and the USA, we calculate that a redistribution of German employment to larger establishments, as in the USA, reduces the labour‐productivity gap by about 25 per cent.

  June 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12100   open full text
• The Geography of Inventiveness in the Primary Sector: Some Initial Results for New Zealand, 1880–1895.
  Rebecca Williams, Les Oxley.
  Australian Economic History Review. June 13, 2016
  At the turn of the twentieth century, New Zealand was one of the wealthiest nations in the world on a per capita basis. We examine the role of innovation in explaining New Zealand's economic performance. Using a new dataset on patent applications for the period 1880–95, we consider whether the geographical concentration of innovative activity influenced economic activity. We find relationships between agricultural and pastoral output indices and inventiveness and between different regions and related industries. The results, however, are relatively weak. We conclude that tests of agglomeration effects in New Zealand during this period deserve further attention.

  June 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12098   open full text
• A tale of two SICs: Japanese and American industrialisation in historical perspective.
  John P. Tang.
  Australian Economic History Review. June 08, 2016
  Late‐developing countries often adopt best practice technologies pioneered abroad, facilitating convergence toward leading economies. Meiji Japan (1868–1912) is one successful example of industrial convergence, but much of the evidence relies on national aggregates or selected industries. Using historical industry data, this paper examines whether Japan adopted new technologies faster compared to the United States. Contrary to conventional wisdom, new sectors did not appear relatively sooner in Japan, however, they did grow to economic significance faster.

  June 08, 2016   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12097   open full text
• Laying the Victorians to Rest: Funerals, Memorials, and the Funeral Business in Nineteenth‐Century Otago.
  Alexander Trapeznik, Austin Gee.
  Australian Economic History Review. November 25, 2015
  This article seeks to integrate the history of the physical aspects of burial practices with the cultural aspects of mourning and bereavement by considering the businesses that catered for the demand created by funerals and mourning in the second half of the nineteenth century. The example of the first major industrial and commercial urban centre to develop in New Zealand, Dunedin, is used to show that a range of businesses emerge quickly to cater for the funerary trade. Many were short lived, and few specialised exclusively in the funerary business.

  November 25, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12096   open full text
• Do Natural Energy Endowments Matter? New Zealand and Uruguay in a Comparative Perspective, 1870–1940.
  Reto Bertoni, Henry Willebald.
  Australian Economic History Review. November 20, 2015
  Settler economies are characterised by abundant natural resources, but these are not homogeneous between countries. There is very little literature about the economic development of settler economies that identifies differences within the club in terms of natural resources. We look for differences in energy endowments in New Zealand and Uruguay considering coal and suitable conditions for hydroelectric generation. New Zealand and Uruguay were similar in many ways but there were huge differences in income per capita levels. A ‘modern’ production structure requires sufficient energy supply at competitive costs and New Zealand's better energy conditions explain that difference.

  November 20, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12092   open full text
• The Beginnings of the Japanese Medical Instruments Industry and the Adaptation of Western Medicine to Japan, 1880–1937.
  Pierre‐Yves Donzé.
  Australian Economic History Review. November 19, 2015
  This article focuses on the development of the Japanese medical instrument industry from the 1880s to the beginning of the war against China (1937). It argues that the growth of this industry relied on the adaptation of Western technologies to the Japanese environment. The article focuses on the learning processes adopted by Japanese entrepreneurs, revealing a major difference between small enterprises, engaged in innovation based on reverse engineering and cooperation with medical doctors, on the one hand, and large firms which benefitted from organisational facilities acquired through international technology transfer and cooperation with domestic R&D centres, on the other hand.

  November 19, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12095   open full text
• Conditions of Successful Land Reform: A Study of Micronesia.
  Dongwoo Yoo, Edwyna Harris.
  Australian Economic History Review. November 09, 2015
  During the twentieth century Japan and the United States attempted land reform in Micronesia. Japan was more successful because a growing population had led to an increasing demand for agricultural products, which could only be met by expanding agriculture across its empire. This required investment in land reform to transfer ownership from common to private rights. Conversely, the Americans faced no such domestic pressures, valuing Micronesia only for its strategic location and military testing. We formulate a model to examine the outcomes of Micronesian land reform under the long‐sighted policy of the Japanese compared with short‐sighted approach of the Americans.

  November 09, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12091   open full text
• Macroeconomic Consequences of Terms of Trade Episodes, Past and Present.
  Tim Robinson, Tim Atkin, Mark Caputo, Hao Wang.
  Australian Economic History Review. October 22, 2015
  The early‐twenty first century saw Australia experience its largest and longest terms of trade boom. This paper places the most recent terms of trade boom in its historical context. While similarities exist with previous episodes, the macroeconomic policy frameworks and settings prevailing were quite different to those of the past. These different frameworks and settings mitigated the broader macroeconomic consequences of the terms of trade upswing and may do likewise as it declines.

  October 22, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12090   open full text
• In the Aftermath: Consumer Choice and the Deregulation of Australian Retail Banking, 1988–1993.
  Judy Taylor, Gary Magee.
  Australian Economic History Review. September 30, 2015
  This article explores whether deregulation of the Australian retail banking sector in the 1980s delivered the enhanced consumer choice that had been promised. Using new data on banking products and their usage, it analyses consumers' ability to select optimal ‘frontier’ products. It concludes that following deregulation of retail banking, product offerings underwent such tumultuous change that the scope for effective consumer choice was severely constrained. While there were improvements towards the end of the period, progress was not assisted by the banks' strategy of proliferating and re‐bundling products. Consequently, the anticipated improvements to consumer choice were slow to arrive.

  September 30, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12081   open full text
• Non‐Residential Capital Stock in Latin America, 1875–2008: New Estimates and International Comparisons.
  Xavier Tafunell, Cristián Ducoing.
  Australian Economic History Review. September 15, 2015
  We use a homogeneous method to estimate non‐residential capital stock for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Our estimates extend back to the late‐nineteenth century, 50 years earlier than the present available estimates. Our estimates use the gross fixed capital formation data base (1850–1950). These data are linked with existing standardised national accounts for the region, such as those of Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Finally, we compare investment in Latin American countries to that of advanced economies, particularly focussing on the performance of two settler countries, Argentina and Australia.

  September 15, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12076   open full text
• Trust, Financial Regulation, and Growth.
  Forrest Capie.
  Australian Economic History Review. September 10, 2015
  Money and financial intermediation are important elements in economic growth. Both depend heavily on trust for their efficient working. In the second half of the twentieth century, trust was eroded and even broke down. Regulation replaced it. The welfare costs grew, and economic growth was damaged. The opposite happened in the move from mercantilism in the eighteenth century to small government and sound money in the nineteenth century. Growth was improved. Perhaps trust can be restored again.

  September 10, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12082   open full text
• Born Global, Made Local: Multinational Enterprise and Australia's Early Wireless Industry.
  Jock Given.
  Australian Economic History Review. August 12, 2015
  This article analyses the evolution of multinational enterprise through a case study of the Australasian wireless company, AWA, in the first half of the twentieth century. Ownership, location, and internalisation advantages explain aspects of the industry's rapid internationalisation, but other factors, including restrictive domestic legislation and oligopolistic competition, are also important. The imperialism of the era encouraged globalisation while binding companies to host nations' strategic imperatives and coordinated policy frameworks. Location factors included government desires to control wireless, especially once broadcasting developed in the 1920s, and to expand local manufacturing capacity for the emerging consumer electrical economy.

  August 12, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12031   open full text
• The Evolution of Australian Monetary Policy in the 1950s.
  Mike Beggs.
  Australian Economic History Review. August 12, 2015
  The 1950s in Australia was a decade of major change in both central banking and the financial system. The changes fed upon one another: financial innovation responded to monetary policy; the authorities adapted their strategy in response. The private banks resisted the harnessing of their balance sheets to policy, and a protracted process of conflict and compromise unfolded. Meanwhile, the growth of non‐bank financial institutions undermined bank‐centred policy. Official controls on bank interest rates opened a space for the new intermediaries. The central bank's attempt to restrain their growth contributed to a credit squeeze at the turn of the 1960s.

  August 12, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12027   open full text
• Effects of Pastoralism and Rabbits on the Economy and Culture of the Diyari People of North‐Eastern South Australia.
  Brian Cooke.
  Australian Economic History Review. May 29, 2015
  The contraction of Aboriginal people from South Australian deserts is associated with European pastoral expansion. Confined to areas near water, livestock damaged vegetation locally, but introduced rabbits, not reliant on drinking water, spread well beyond pastoral settlement. Thus, rabbits caused almost universal desertification and were an equal factor in disrupting the former food web that sustained Aboriginal people. Within 30 years of the rabbits' arrival, important totemic animals like rabbit bandicoots had disappeared, leaving the people not only short of traditional game but also culturally bereft. A comparative economic approach to Aboriginal totemism explores changes in both ecological and cultural contexts.

  May 29, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12067   open full text
• Long‐Run Trends in Australian Executive Remuneration: BHP, 1887–2012.
  Mike Pottenger, Andrew Leigh.
  Australian Economic History Review. May 29, 2015
  Outside the United States, little is known of long‐run trends in executive compensation. We fill this gap by studying BHP Billiton, a resources giant that has long been one of the largest companies on the Australian stock market. From 1887 to 2012, trends in CEO and director remuneration (relative to average earnings) follow a U‐shape. This matches the pattern for US executive compensation, Australian top incomes, and (for the past two decades) average trends in executive compensation in top Australian firms. Like the United States, Australia experienced a post‐war ‘great compression’ prior to the recent ‘great divergence’.

  May 29, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12065   open full text
• Excise Tax Harmonisation in Australia at Federation.
  Peter Lloyd.
  Australian Economic History Review. May 22, 2015
  Constitutional changes at the time of Federation in Australia required the harmonisation of the excise tax rates of the former Colonies. This paper outlines the excise tax systems of the Colonies before Federation and that of the Commonwealth after Federation. Estimates are made of the consumer tax equivalent rates and of the implicit rates of protection in each Colony and in the Commonwealth after Federation. The Commonwealth Government harmonised the excise tax rates of the Colonies at about the mid‐points of the rates of the Colonies but the implicit rates of protection increased after Federation.

  May 22, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12066   open full text
• Chinese Regions in the Great Divergence: Provincial Gross Domestic Product per Capita, 1873–1918.
  Paul Caruana‐Galizia, Ye Ma.
  Australian Economic History Review. April 24, 2015
  We construct 1912/18 Chinese provincial gross domestic product per capita from primary sources and project cross‐sections for 1873 and 1893. The results fit the historical record. We hypothesise that regionally specific conflicts have a role to play in explaining differential growth rates, and that geography, governance, and sectoral structures explain relative income‐level rankings. China's richest provinces matched Europe's poorest. A divergence did indeed occur, but our estimates show that at a broader economic level, it was perhaps not as dramatic as some of the literature implies.

  April 24, 2015   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12064   open full text
• Economic Stagnation and Crisis in Korea during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.
  Young Hoon Rhee.
  Australian Economic History Review. March 03, 2014
  In contrast to rapid economic growth in the twentieth century, Korea suffered a long economic decline in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the failure accelerating from 1850 to 1890. According to 36 different harvest records, rice productivity continuously declined from the early eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries due to deforestation and increase in natural disasters. Contraction of rural markets after the interruption of trade with Japan also contributed to the decrease in rice production. The third reason for the nineteenth‐century crisis was the dissolution of the government‐led grain storage and redistribution system. Finally, the ultimate culprit for the crisis could be found in Confucianism with which the Joseon Dynasty was unable to properly understand and respond to the crisis.

  March 03, 2014   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12032   open full text
• Intragenerational Income Mobility in Gothenburg, Sweden, 1925–94: Before, during, and after the Rise of the Welfare State.
  Birgitta Jansson.
  Australian Economic History Review. March 03, 2014
  This article compares income mobility at the household level using tax data for Gothenburg, Sweden, from 1925 to 1994. Income mobility is defined as changes in household disposable equivalent income over time. Results indicate extensive income mobility over time. Income mobility is often linked to the life cycle, and three classic poverty risks – childhood, starting a family, and old age – have been reduced. Results also show the emergence of two new poverty risks – young adulthood and family‐building for immigrants – challenges that need to be addressed by future policy prescriptions.

  March 03, 2014   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12033   open full text
• ‘Does Farming Pay in Victoria?’ Profit Potential of the Farming Industry in Mid‐Nineteenth‐Century Victoria.
  Dmytro Ostapenko.
  Australian Economic History Review. March 03, 2014
  The conventional view of the fortunes of European newcomers who cropped land in mid‐nineteenth‐century Victoria is confined to a description of their difficulties. This article critically assesses the scope for profit‐making in the local farming sector in the late 1830s to early 1870s. The microeconomic environment in which early colonial farmers operated is reconstructed in this article with the use of modern Michael Porter's five forces of competition model. The article shows the high profit potential of crop farming – even when on a small scale – throughout the period, with the exception of the last few years when intensified competition among farmers affected their profits.

  March 03, 2014   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12034   open full text
• The Spanish Origins of Extractive Institutions in the Philippines.
  Prince Christian Cruz.
  Australian Economic History Review. March 03, 2014
  Why did the Spanish colonisers of the Philippines establish extractive institutions? Using an explicit rational choice framework, the article examines the demand for institutions of Spanish settlers during the conquest period. It provides a framework for analysing the incentive structure faced by individuals that lead them to demand, create, and preserve certain types of institutions. The article argues that extractive institutions were demanded and supplied to minimise the uncertainty brought by high mortality and the relatively low wealth in the Philippines.

  March 03, 2014   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12035   open full text
• Douglas Copland's Battle With The Younger Brethren of Economists.
  Alex Millmow.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 08, 2013
  This article discusses the problematic relationship between Douglas Copland and the new generation of post‐war Australian economists. Copland felt that their view of economic policy was contrary to Australia's best interests. The critique and feud was to last right up till Copland's retirement. The article shows how Copland's views differed from those of inside economists and therefore the official policy line.

  July 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12010   open full text
• The Current State of Business History in Latin America.
  Carlos Dávila.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 08, 2013
  Business history in Latin America has seen significant growth in the past 25 years, most notably since the beginning of this century. Although the sub‐discipline benefitted from seminal studies by British and U.S. scholars, most works of note are currently produced by local scholars. Latin American business history holds great comparative potential for business historians in other parts of the world undertaking studies in the areas of emerging economies, business‐state relationships, the role of entrepreneurship, business groups, entrepreneurial families, and foreign investment and imperialism.

  July 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12006   open full text
• Trade, the Staple Theory of Growth, and Fluctuations in Colonial Singapore, 1900–39.
  Keen Meng Choy, Ichiro Sugimoto.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 08, 2013
  Our paper enquires into the nexus between trade, growth, and fluctuations in the British colony of Singapore during the early twentieth century. Hitherto, little quantitative economic history has been written on this great entrepôt of Southeast Asia due to a lack of data. We overcome this limitation by utilising the gross domestic product series recently constructed for the pre‐war period by Sugimoto. This comprehensive data set enables us to explore the relevance and applicability of the staple theory of export‐led growth to colonial Singapore through cliometric analyses. The results suggest that foreign trade had acted both as an engine of growth and a source of economic instability.

  July 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12007   open full text
• Institution Building and Variation in the Formation of the Australian Wool Market.
  David Merrett, Simon Ville.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 08, 2013
  The relocation of the wool market from London to the major Australian port cities from the late nineteenth century required the formation of an institution to govern the auction business, namely the wool brokers' association. Regional variations, among Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, occurred in the structure and effectiveness of the institution despite each regional association having been formed around the same time, for the same purpose, and with an overlap of participating firms. We draw on institution theory to guide our account and find that the impact of legacy factors and differences in market conditions explain the regional variations.

  July 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12008   open full text
• The Motivation and Effectiveness of Gas Industry Economic Regulation in New South Wales, 1912–39.
  Malcolm Abbott.
  Australian Economic History Review. July 08, 2013
  The oldest industry in Australia subjected to economic regulation is the gas supply industry in the state of New South Wales. In this paper the aims and motivation of the New South Wales Government in establishing the regulatory regime in 1912 and the subsequent effectiveness in achieving them are determined. Initially the regulatory regime was based on ad hoc arrangements, but eventually a more permanent structure was devised that effectively defused political controversy over gas market pricing and stabilised prices rather than substantially lowered them.

  July 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/aehr.12009   open full text