| Abstract: | One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Australian economy over most of the past century has been its labour market institutions and organizations. Recently these institutions have changed to become more decentralized. Douglas North has argued that examining and explaining institutional change through time is an important and comparatively unresearched topic facing economic historians. In this paper, changes to Australia's labour market institutions are examined from the perspective of the New Institutional Economics. Following North, it is argued that further research should be directed to identifying the role ideological beliefs have played in shaping Australia's labour market institutions over time. |
