This paper investigates the mining industry's poor productivity performance as measured by the conventional multifactor productivity (MFP) index during the recent mining boom in Australia. We derive a relationship between the measured and 'true' MFP growth that separates the effects of returns...

Evolutionary economists have tended to assess firms and industries separately, neglecting the role of their interaction in the process of economic growth and development. We trace the separation of firms and industries to Marshall, whose industrial analysis by means of the representative firm...

Edith Penrose and Josef Steindl each developed a distinctive analysis of the growth of firms. They undertook to understand the process that was leading to increasing dominance of industry, particularly manufacturing industry, by a small number of large firms. In the present paper, we examine the...

Data from the mining and manufacturing sectors of the Australian and Canadian economies are used to illustrate the divergent cyclical behaviour of prices and productivity. Productivity in manufacturing is observed to move in the same direction as demand shocks. The opposite is found in mining. Why?

This paper empirically investigates and identifies the main contributing factors to output and productivity growth in Australia for the period 1950-2005. Cointegration and a vector error-correction model are used along with Granger causality tests, impulse response functions and forecast error...

We contribute to the task of identifying trends and cycles in energy prices by examining very long series of prices for coal and oil, going back to 1650 in the case of coal and 1859 in the case of oil. We find annual rates of increase in real price of greater than two percent are found for coal...

Dramatic changes in the relative prices of goods in international trade have accompanied, and indeed preceded, the global crisis. These changes are reflected in the terms of trade of individual countries and in the relative prices of goods within those countries. Asia-Pacific countries are...