RDP 7701 abridged: A Preliminary Annual Database 1900/01 to 1973/74 Abridged Version Introduction

Australian economic experience during the past seventy-five years has been extremely varied. Thanks to the efforts of the various official State and Commonwealth statisticians, and to the impressive work of many economic historians, it is possible to bring together a reasonably consistent and reliable database covering the twentieth century.

This abridged paper summarizes in graphical form the results of a data collection project conducted as part of the Reserve Bank of Australia's econometric model building. A longer paper, which includes a summary of the sources and methods, and the database itself, is available to those who require the data for research purposes.

The present report is broken up into two sections. Section I provides a brief discussion of the reliability of the data, while section II contains graphs and a commentary on some features of some of the series in the database.