Strategy, Scale or Policy? Exit in the Australian Car Industry.

This paper estimates the importance of strategy, scale and policy in determining the pattern of exit in the Australian car industry. Previous studies found only a weak role for strategy in exit from declining industries. Using a new dataset and improvements on the specification used in earlier studies, we find evidence that strategy influences the pattern of exit where economies of scale are less important. Protection is also found to negatively influence the likelihood of exit. Copyright 2001 by The Economic Society of Australia.