Borrowing and business in Australia

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 183051623X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-222122

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Wood, Gordon L. http://d-nb.info/gnd/1239193688

Title:: Borrowing and business in Australia

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Oxford university press, H. Milford

Year of publication:: 1930

Scope:: xv, 267 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part V. Australia during and after the great war

Collection:: Economics Books

AUSTRALIA DURING THE WAR 167 statistical measurement, he specifically excepts it from con- sideration in his analysis. But the fundamental condition by means of which foreign trade should exercise its influence over price-levels, i.e. through the gold-exchange standard, was now missing. The peculiarity of the war-period as a phase in which the gold standard in both Britain and Australia was temporarily abandoned, and the consequent effects of this step upon domestic finance and foreign exchange, will be noticed later. An aspect of greater importance at the moment is the general relation of this change to overseas borrowing. From Copland’s exhaustive survey of the war-period it would appear that the greater increase in the British price-level, relative to the Australian level, indicates that the latter was much more subject to local factors than at times when the foreign exchanges were controlled by the gold standard! This is unquestionably true ; but when he declares that, even in normal times, the Aus- tralian price-level is influenced only partly by external factors because foreign trade is less important than home trade, he is on much more debatable ground. The analysis of barter terms of trade made for earlier borrowing cycles reveals a connexion of very great significance between the volume of external loans, and changes both in the relative levels of the borrowing and lending countries, and in the sectional price-levels of the borrowing country. But the fact that the export-import price- level increased during the war by 53 per cent. while wholesale prices rose by 70 and retail prices by only 40 per cent., certainly appears to support his conclusion, that local factors were operating in addition to the external factor of loans, and operat- ing to an extent so much greater than they would normally do under a gold-exchange standard as to completely overshadow | Commonwealth Labour Report, No. 13, p. 150. Wholesale Price Index Numbers 1911 1913 1918 1920 1922 Year Gt. Britain. { Board of Teade.} 1,000 1,065 2,443 | 3,343 1.801 Australia. (Commonwealth Statistician.) 1,000 1,088, 1,934 2,480 1,758

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