Maximising the benefits of development in Australia's Far North

Abstract

This paper presents and analyses data from a survey of close to 1000 private and government organisations in 17 different industries across Australia’s Far North. The data are used in a 'bottom-up', Keynesian-type analysis to estimate regionally relevant business-level multipliers (as opposed to using a 'top-down' Input-Output, or General Equilibrium approach). The results allow us to identify the industries whose expansion is likely to generate the largest regional economic benefit, and to comment on how policy might be changed so as to increase size of the local benefits that occur as a result of development.