Biographical note: McLeanIan W.: Ian W. McLean is currently a visiting research fellow in economics at the University of Adelaide, where he taught for many years. He is the coeditor of "The Australian Economy in the Long Run".

This book is the first comprehensive account of how Australia attained the world's highest living standards within a few decades of European settlement, and how the nation has sustained an enviable level of income to the present. Beginning with the Aboriginal economy at the end of the eighteenth...