Variability in export returns is a major source of instability in the Australian economy and, in the presence of price and wage rigidities, may be a substantial cause of social costs. There have been calls for explicit policies to change Australia's pattern of exports away from traditional agricultural and mineral exports. In this article, the implications of changes in the pattern of Australian exports have been examined taking into account the variability of each category and the correlations between categories. From the results it appears that the diversification from rural to mineral exports since 1970 has substantially reduced the variability of export returns. While rural exports remain the most variable component of the total, a reduction in the rural share of total exports and a corresponding expansion of Australias traditional manufactured exports would appear to have surprisingly little effect on export variability. Copyright 1989 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Article provided by The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research in its journal Australian Economic Review.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christopher F. Baum).
Related research
Keywords:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)