In this in-depth overview of Australia's economy, Michael Enright and Richard Petty — leading scholars on international competition—look at the data behind the news reports to offer a complete view of Australia's stable and wealthy economy. The book compares Australia with other similarly sized OECD economies as well as other Asia-Pacific economies and looks at fifteen international sources of data on competitiveness. It features a large-scale survey on Australian companies and offers deep insight on the country's future in terms of economics and economic policy. Revealing an honest assessment of Australia's true position in the world, the book looks at how Australian businesses see themselves and offers policy positions for government and firms to make the most of Australia's unique global economic position. Backed by CPA Australia, one of the world's largest accounting bodies Written by two global authorities on economic competitiveness Captures the thinking of more than 6,000 business leaders both within and outside of Australia Explains how Australia has weathered the global recession and looks at Australia's relationship with China For business leaders and policy makers in need of an in-depth look at the current and future state of Australia's economy, this book offers valuable and comprehensive information.

A short bibliography (91 entries) of articles, books, and reports published from 1989, on Australia's international competitiveness. The works are predominantly economics-based and wide in scope, and all are publicly available. The bibliography is arranged alphabetically by title, but major sources are also discussed by subject. The paper won the prize for postgraduate bibliographic work at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Competitive pressure is essential to good economic performance. But many are concerned that it is waning. They say large firms are dominating markets, pushing up prices and profits, squeezing suppliers, and slowing growth in wages and productivity. They point to the consolidation of old industries and the rise of new ones dominated by large firms. Is competitive pressure in Australia weak? Is it waning? How costly to Australia is market power? This report assesses the evidence. It then proposes policies to increase competitive pressure.

The aim of this book is to consider theoretically the notion of the global competitiveness of regions, as well as giving attention as to how such competitiveness may be empirically measured. With this in mind, the book has three specific objectives: first, to place the concept of regional competitiveness within the context of regional economic development theory; second, to present a rationale and method for quantifying the global competitiveness of regions; and, third, to undertake the most geographically widespread analysis of regional competitiveness differences across the globe. With regard to the third goal, the analysis incorporates more than 500 regions across Europe, North and South America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the so-called BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The importance of the concept of competitiveness has increased rapidly in recent years, with the issues surrounding it becoming, at the same time, more empirically refined and theoretically complex. The focus on regions reflects the growing consensus that they are the primary spatial units that compete to attract investment, and it is at the regional level that knowledge is circulated and transferred, resulting in agglomerations, or clusters, of industrial and service sector enterprises. This growing acknowledgement of the region’s role as a key spatial unit of organisation has led to attention turning to competitiveness at a more regional level. The book explores the results of the World Competitiveness Index of Regions (WCIR), covering the rankings and results of the 2014 edition. The WCIR provides a tool for analysing the development of a range of regional economies across the globe. It enables an illustration of the changing patterns of regional competitiveness on the international stage to be generated. In fundamental terms, the WCIR aims to produce an integrated and overall benchmark of the knowledge capacity, capability, and sustainability of each region, and the extent to which this knowledge is translated into economic value and transferred into the wealth of the citizens of each region.