Micro Reform in the Australian Labour Market: Implications for Productivity and Growth

The issues being tackled by this Conference are perennial in economics and are at the heart of the discipline. Growth and productivity were the central concerns of Adam Smith’s inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. There has been phenomenal growth in the wealth of nations since 1776, and also in economic theory, but the enduring insights prevail. The key determinants of growth, both absolutely and relative to other nations, include physical resource endowments, social and political institutions, the distribution of income, the skills of the population, the extent of the market, social and physical infrastructure, generation/accumulation of sufficient investable resources, and technological innovation. Some (though not all) of these will be affected by microeconomic reform, but all of them affect the growth rates of employment, output and prices.