Abstract

The history of the economics of Australia and New Zealand will be, at bottom, an account of that economics’ confrontation of its marginality. For any story of economic thought in Australia and New Zealand will necessarily tell of the attempt to plant and cultivate in uncleared ground the long developed vine of older societies. It will relate how the cultivators pondered whether adapting the growth to local conditions would be more or less rewarding than simply perfecting their cultivation of the imported stem, and introducing its ever purer varieties. It will reveal that the adaptation of imported varieties to idiosyncratic conditions was in the event limited, though not wholly without significance; and even leaving some trace of cross-fertilisation of the wider world. For all that, the story, I contend, will conclude today with the local strains being submerged by the benefits and snares of globalisation.