Platform Update: RBA Interest Rate Data

I've made a push to put my platform into a state where it could conceivably be used by other people. It is a long way from feature-complete, but it has now reached a state where it is clear how the code works. I've worked on adding the storage of series meta-data, and I used the interest rate data sets from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) as an example.

When Yield Curves Fail: Australian Experience

The belief that yield curve inversions forecast recessions fails most spectacularly in Australia in the post-1990 era. As shown above, the 3-month/10-year slope inverted multiple times in the post-1995 era. However, none of these inversions coincided with recessions in Australia (albeit financial turbulence did hit the country).

Underemployment And The Phillips Curve: Australian Experience

The relationship between labour market slack and inflation (typically referred to as the Phillips Curve) is complicated, as it depends upon the structure of economic institutions. The post-1990 era saw labour market reforms that led to widespread underemployment. This article summarises some points from the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) textbook Macroeconomics by Mitchell, Wray, and Watts (affiliate link). I replicated a chart of Australian data -- which of course meant that I needed to add support for data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on my research platform.