IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ozl/journl/v7y2004i4p413-438.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economists and Australian Wage policy Before World War II

Author

Listed:
  • Keith Hancock

    (Flinders University)

Abstract

Before the 1920s, Australian economics was virtually non-existent; but in the twenty years before World War II there was a conspicuous growth in the body of professional economists, located mainly in the universities. The system of wage fixation caught the attention of some of them. The paper discusses the economists’ commentaries on and contributions to wage policy in relation to (1) proposals in the 1920s for relating money wages to ‘productivity’, (2) emerging and somewhat novel ideas about the tariff, (3) the depression and (4) post-depression recovery. Although most of the economists’ ideas were worked out in local debate, the paper notes the comments on Australia’s wage policies by J.M. Keynes and the role of W.B. Reddaway in his brief sojourn in Australia.

Suggested Citation

  • Keith Hancock, 2004. "Economists and Australian Wage policy Before World War II," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 7(4), pages 413-438, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:ozl:journl:v:7:y:2004:i:4:p:413-438
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ftprepec.drivehq.com/ozl/journl/downloads/AJLE074hancock.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. J. B. Brigden, 1927. "The Australian Tariff. And The Standard Of Living: A Rejoinder," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 3(1), pages 102-116, May.
    2. L. F. Giblin, 1927. "The Australian Tariff And The Standard Of Living:A Note On Mr. Benham'S Statistics," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 3(1), pages 148-156, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Keith Hancock, 2013. "The Australian basic wage case of 1930–1931: Judge-made economic policy," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 24(2), pages 181-204, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rod Tyers & William Coleman, 2008. "Beyond Brigden: Australia's Inter‐War Manufacturing Tariffs, Real Wages and Economic Size," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(264), pages 50-67, March.
    2. Rod Tyers & William Coleman, 2005. "Beyond Brigden: Australia’s Pre-War Manufacturing Tariffs, Real Wages and Economic Size," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2005-456, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    3. Myers, Laurel, 2002. "Australian Agricultural Economics - Critical Issues That Shaped The Profession," 2002 Conference (46th), February 13-15, 2002, Canberra, Australia 173984, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    History of Economic Thought since 1925; Wages; Compensation and labor costs: public policy (wage subsidies; minimum wage legislation); Economic history: labor and consumers; demography; education; income and wealth: Asia including Middle East;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B29 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Other
    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
    • N35 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Asia including Middle East

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ozl:journl:v:7:y:2004:i:4:p:413-438. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sandie Rawnsley (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/becurau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.