Real Time Database released

CFCM Fellows Kevin Lee and Kalvinder Shields have recently completed an ARC-funded Discovery project to build a real-time macroeconomic database for Australia. The database is available at http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au/RTAustralianMacroDatabase/ and will now be maintained and kept up-to-date by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The database includes measures of GDP, its components, prices, and key monetary and labour market statistics over the last fifty years as published and revised in real time. The vintages of data are collated from various sources and accommodate multiple definitional changes, providing a comprehensive description of the macroeconomic environment as experienced by Australian policy- and decision-makers. The Australian database project is part of an on-going study within CFCM investigating decision-making using macroeconomic models.