Inflation in Australia after the Pandemic.

Use the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) website

https://www.abs.gov.au/

to download data covering the period January 2011-present for the following macroeconomic concepts

(i) nominal GDP [referred to as 'GDP at current prices'](quarterly)

(ii) real GDP [referred to as 'chain volume GDP'] (quarterly)

(iii) employment/population ratio (monthly)

(iv) CPI inflation ['all groups CPI'] (quarterly)

Note that some of these variables are measured quarterly (4 times per year) and others are measured monthly (12 times per year). Use seasonally adjusted data.

Use a spreadsheet program to plot each of these four variables over the period January 2011- present. Plot nominal GDP and real GDP as indexes with the last quarter of 2019 indexed to 100. Plot the employment/population ratio as a percentage. Plot the CPI inflation rate as both a quarterly rate and a year-on-year annual rate. Make sure that each plot is appropriately presented (with an informative title, and axes appropriately scaled and labelled etc...)

Since the early 1990s, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has had an official inflation target of '2-3 percent on average over time'. Discuss to what extent the RBA has been successful in meeting this objective in recent years. Does the recent rise in inflation generate a difficult challenge for the RBA? Why or why not?