Uncovering the causes of Australia's impressive long-run growth outcomes has only recently gained attention from both domestic and international scholars thanks to the seminal work of Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (“The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation.” American Economic Review 19, no. 5 [2001]: 1369–1401). This interest in the remarkable achievement of Australian growth makes a book like this a very timely and welcome addition to the literature. Moreover, Ian McLean's many decades of work on Australian economic history makes him the perfect person to write a text such as this. Comprised of ten chapters in total, the book follows a logical structure by dividing the chapters into chronological periods, which mirror the contours of growth, whether these prove to be phases of rising or falling prosperity. In each period, McLean's aim is to identify what factors contributed to or constrained growth whether that was domestic policy such as immigration or tariff protection, climate factors like drought, or international conditions for instance, war.

Chapter 1 sets the scene for the reader by outlining the common themes that will run through the following nine chapters. Here McLean emphasizes the importance of comparative and counterfactual analysis utilized in each subsequent chapter. In chapter 2, the relative performance of Australia over the long run is detailed utilizing available statistics to “lay out the evidence that motivates this inquiry” (p. 11). Broadly speaking, chapters 3 to 6 analyze the colonial era (1788 to 1901) examining the peculiarities of the convict economy, the rise of wool production, and the effects of the 1850s gold rushes, which includes a discussion of how Australia avoided the resource curse. Chapters 6 to 9 generally cover the twentieth century including the two World Wars, Great Depression, the long boom from the Korean War until the oil shocks of the early 1970s, shifts in federal government policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the return to boom times post-1991 and what McLean labels “the quarry economy” (p. 228). Chapter 10 sums up the main themes identified in the preceding chapters.

One of the most outstanding aspects of the book is McLean's measured, thorough, and balanced approach to the study that is consistent throughout the text. For instance, in chapter 7 the effects of World War I limited Australia's ability to rely on continued imports from Britain and this naturally led to a shift toward an import substitution growth strategy. This led to greater industrialization as the manufacturing sector diversified but, domestic producers were generally less efficient than the foreign firms previously exporting to Australia and therefore, this likely dampened prosperity until after World War II. McLean picks up this issue again in chapter 9, where he argues that gradual outward reorientation starting in the 1960s was due to the relative costs of inward versus outward orientation as the international economy became more stable and was expanding. By that time, Australia's period of import substitution had served its purpose and international circumstances favored policy changes which came about in the 1970s and 1980s with the dismantling of tariffs and the floating of the dollar (pp. 219–23). This move toward greater liberalization with an emphasis on export oriented growth allowed Australia to take advantage of rapid development in the Asian economies of Japan and the four Tigers.

In every subperiod examined, McLean is meticulous in identifying the important issue of timing. He acknowledges that certain exogenous or endogenous factors, which occurred at different junctures in time, created changing opportunities and costs. Throughout the text, these opportunities or costs are linked to one or more sources of growth such as, institutions, geography, international conditions, climate, resource discoveries, population changes, and government policy. For example, in his discussion of the effects of World War II (chapter 8) on Australian prosperity, he notes the economy was positively impacted due to its location relative to the large numbers of foreign troops, particularly Americans, based in the southwest Pacific during the 1940s. The positive effects on prosperity were possible because Australia's industrial capacity had increased after World War I via the shift toward import substitution.

While the text is extremely well-written and thoroughly researched at the outset, McLean notes that one of his aims in writing this book was “to provide those Australians who are curious about their own good fortune with an explanation for what surely ranks as one of their country's most remarkable achievements” (p. 3). In order to achieve this aim, McLean uses technical terms, economic theory, and available statistics sparingly, but appropriately. However, one aspect in which the text suffers because of this approach is in the references. For both the general audience and more specifically, economic history scholars a few more references, particularly in the discussion of the colonial period (chapters 3 to 6), would have been useful. This is even more important than for the years post-Federation because the colonial era is one of the least examined periods in Australian economic history and yet, it resulted in the country becoming very rich in a very short period of time, from very questionable beginnings as a convict outpost. Further, a few more definitions would have been worthwhile such as explaining the nature of a “settler” economy to add further weight to the international comparisons utilized throughout the text. Nevertheless, these minor concerns do not detract from the overall quality of the study and the important contribution of the text to the economic history literature. McLean has delivered an extremely valuable and detailed study that, I think, will prove to be an essential resource for those interested in Australian economic history specifically but also for scholars concerned with the broader puzzle of why some countries are rich while others are poor.