Changing trade patterns and economic development. the experience of New Zealand and Australia, 1945-1968

Abstract

Australia and New Zealand are both what has been termed "bridge nations". M.J. Moriarty (1965): 13 They have elements of the developed countries: high living standards and a typical developed occupational structure; and although underdevelopment and agricultural production are not necessarily synonymous, they also have elements of underdevelopment present in their heavy dependence on the sale of primary produce for export earnings. Both countries have experienced as has the Tiers Monde, the vicissitudes of a close association with the advanced industrial countries, whether in terms of the transmission of external income fluctuations or the absence of countervailing power in markets for primary products. Other characteristics held in common, in degree greater with the Third World countries than with the advanced nations, are the dependence on imports to supply a substantial proportion of economic resources, and to improve their trade balance neither can rely on an indefinite expansion of traditional exports.