Australia

Continental scale and resource-rich physical geography. The country spans about 7.69 million square kilometers across temperate, arid, tropical, and subantarctic zones, with the sixth-largest land area in the world. The interior is sparsely populated; the resource base in the Pilbara, the Bowen Basin, and offshore gas fields underwrites the external account ^S5,S8.

Urban coastal concentration. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide hold roughly two thirds of the resident population and drive most of the labor market, the housing wealth stock, and the services economy. Population density inside the major capitals is high; population density outside them is among the lowest in the OECD ^S6,S10.

Floating exchange rate as a shock absorber. The Australian dollar has floated since December 1983. Commodity-price moves transmit quickly into the exchange rate, which buffers domestic incomes when the terms of trade fall and dampens overheating when commodity prices rise ^S4,S7.

Inflation-targeting central bank with a flexible mandate. The Reserve Bank of Australia targets consumer-price inflation between 2 and 3 percent on average over time. The cash-rate target is the operational instrument, set by the Reserve Bank Board with a published statement explaining each decision ^S4.

Migration-fed labor force. Births minus deaths produce only a small share of recent population change. Net overseas migration drives most of the recent expansion of the working-age cohort, which makes labor-supply outcomes sensitive to skilled-migration settings, the international-student pipeline, and humanitarian intake ^S10.