Commodity Boom and Their Impacts on the Western Autralina Economy: The Iron Ore Case

Western Australia is a resource-rich province. Since 1890s, the resources booms have played a key role in the development of the State’s economy. In the last a few years, Western Australia’s resources industry continued to enjoy exceptional conditions created by strong international demand for commodities. This paper is aimed to examine the likely impact of this commodity boom in the iron ore sector on the Western Australian economy using a general equilibrium approach. The modelling results indicate that the Western Australian economy will benefit from the expansion in iron ore exports and investment in terms of rising consumption and employment, although at the industry level there will be losers as well as winners.