Cover -- Why Australia Prospered -- THE PRINCETON ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE WESTERN WORLD -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Map -- CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Weaving Analysis and Narrative -- CHAPTER 2 What Is to Be Explained, and How -- Comparative Levels of GDP Per Capita -- Booms, Busts, and Stagnation in Domestic Prosperity -- Other Indicators of Economic Prosperity -- From Evidence to Analysis -- Extensive Growth and Factor Accumulation -- Growth Theory and Australian Economic Historiography -- Recent Themes in Growth Economics -- CHAPTER 3 Origins: An Economy Built from Scratch? -- The Pre-1788 Economy of the Aborigines -- The Aboriginal Contribution to the Post-1788 Economy -- The Convict Economy and Its Peculiar Labor Market -- Further Features of the Economy Relevant to Later Prosperity -- British Subsidies and Australian Living Standards -- CHAPTER 4 Squatting, Colonial Autocracy, and Imperial Policies -- Why the Wool Industry Was So Efficient -- Evolution of Political Institutions: From Autocracy to Responsible Government -- The Labor Market: Ending Transportation, Preventing Coolie Immigration -- Thwarting the Squatters: Land Policies to 1847 -- Other Determinants of Early Colonial Prosperity -- The Argentine Road Not Taken -- CHAPTER 5 Becoming Very Rich -- The Economic Effects of Gold: Avoiding the Resource Curse -- Sustaining Economic Prosperity Following the Rushes -- Consolidating Democracy and Resolving the Squatter-Selector Conflict -- Openness and Growth -- Rural Productivity and Its Sources -- CHAPTER 6 Depression, Drought, and Federation -- Explaining Relative Incomes -- Eating the Seed Corn? -- Boom, Bubble, and Bust: A Classic Debt Crisis -- Why Was Recovery So Slow? Comparison with Other Settler Economies.

Tropics, Crops, and Melanesians: Another Road Not Taken -- Economic Effects of Federation -- Accounting for the Loss of the "Top Spot" in Income Per Capita -- CHAPTER 7 A Succession of Negative Shocks -- Why Was the Economic Impact of World War I So Severe? -- Why No Return to Normalcy? -- Pursuing Rural Development-A Field of Dreams? -- Growth in Other Settler Economies -- Debt Crisis, Then Depression-Policy Responses and Constraints -- Imperial Economic Links-Declining Net Benefits -- Could the Post-1960 Mineral Boom Have Occurred Earlier? -- The Debate over Stagnant Living Standards -- CHAPTER 8 The Pacific War and the Second Golden Age -- Why the Pacific War Fostered Domestic Growth -- The Golden Age Was Not Uniquely Australian -- Export Growth, Factor Inflows, and the Korean War Wool Boom -- Macroeconomic Theory and Policies-What Role? -- Location Advantage: Asian Industrialization and Changing Trade Partners -- High Tide for Australian Industrialization -- Underinvestment in Human Capital? -- The Debate over Postwar Growth Performance -- CHAPTER 9 Shocks, Policy Shifts, and Another Long Boom -- Why Did the Postwar Economic Boom End? -- The Reemergence of a Booming Mining Sector -- Macroeconomic Management in the 1970s -- Economic Policy Shifts in the 1980s -- Reevaluations -- The Quarry Economy: The Return of Resources- Based Prosperity -- The Contribution of Economic Reforms to Productivity -- Sustaining Prosperity through Boom and Bubble-A Historical Perspective -- CHAPTER 10 The Shifting Bases of Prosperity -- Appendix Note on Statistics and Sources -- References -- Index -- Figures -- Figure 2.1 Comparative GDP per capita, selected years, 1820 to 2008. -- Figure 2.2 Population increase per decade, 1790 to 2009. -- Figure 2.3 Growth rate of GDP per capita by period, 1850 to 2010. -- Figure 2.4 Distribution of top incomes, 1921 to 2003.

Figure 4.1 Wool trade, 1822 to 1850. -- Figure 5.1 Mining shares of total employment and GDP, 1849 to 2009. -- Figure 5.2 Export and trade ratios, 1825 to 2009. -- Figure 5.3 Government debt as a percentage of GDP, 1854 to 1914. -- Figure 6.1 GDP per capita, 1889 to 1914. -- Figure 6.2 Foreign debt-servicing ratio, 1861 to 1983. -- Figure 6.3 Victoria: government revenue, expenditure, and defi cit, 1890 to 1914. -- Figure 6.4 Growth indicators: Argentina, Australia, and Canada, 1890 to 1913. -- Figure 7.1 Alternative estimates of GDP per capita, 1914 to 1939. -- Figure 7.2 Government debt as a percentage of GDP, 1901 to 1962. -- Figure 7.3 Tariff protection, 1904 to 2005. -- Figure 7.4 Unemployment rate, 1901 to 2010. -- Figure 8.1 Manufacturing shares of total employment and GDP, 1891 to 2009. -- Figure 8.2 Immigration indicators, 1925 to 2007. -- Figure 8.3 Terms of trade, 1870 to 2009. -- Figure 8.4 Shares of total exports to Japan and the U.K., 1949 to 1989. -- Figure 8.5 Comparative education participation rates at ages 16 and 17, 1910 to 1971. -- Figure 9.1 Annual growth rate of GDP per capita, 1951 to 2010. -- Figure 9.2 Australia's percentage of world "economic demonstrated resources" of major minerals, December 2008. -- Figure 9.3 Mining investment as a percentage of GDP, 1861 to 2009. -- Figure 9.4 GDP per capita adjusted for the terms of trade, 1960 to 2010. -- Figure 9.5 Estimated contributions to growth in real aggregate gross domestic income, 1970 to 2009. -- Figure 10.1 Comparative GDP per capita and comparative HDI rankings, 2010. -- Tables -- Table 2.1 Economic and population growth rates by period, annual average percentages, 1850 to 2010. -- Table 7.1 Social indicators, 1891 to 1947.