Australia’s battered regions get a raw deal

In the popular imagination, Australia is often viewed as a sophisticated 21st-century economy, comparable to any number of advanced developed economies.

Yet when one examines the balance of the nation’s exports, it’s largely about resources, as the chart below of quarterly export volumes from CBA illustrates. And this is assuming one takes the nation’s education exports at face value.

The Harvard Economic Complexity Index (ECI) ranks Australia 105 out of 145 countries, highlighting the nation’s profound reliance on resource exports to support capital inflows, the Australian dollar, and its trade balance.