Today we look at the historical unemployment rate for Ireland. No word yet on whether they have different definitions for "unemployed" and "out of work." This data I found at this site, which allows you to telescope the record to obtain monthly data from 1984 to the end of 2011 (for Ireland--the range of data differs for other countries).
Through the '80s and early '90s the unemployment rate was pretty high (by our standards). It fell during the tech boom of the late 90s, staying low until early 2008 when the rate very rapidly returned to the levels of the late 80s.
In earlier articles we have used the phase space reconstruction as a tool for interpreting the dynamics of the system. For ease of presentation, we limit our reconstructions to two dimensions even though we recognize that two dimensions is not sufficient for a true reconstruction. Below we see such a plot using the time delay method, with a lag of twelve months.
I'm not sure whether I would characterize the high unemployment as an area of stability, but you could make a pretty good argument for the highlighted area in the low unemployment section of the curve. The unemployment state occupied that tiny region of phase space for nearly six years.
One observation that favours a high-unemployment area of Lyapunov stability is the return to late-1980s levels of unemployment once the economic "miracle" collapsed.
Enlarging the lower part of the graph shows just how compressed the reconstructed phase space is for six years during the real estate bubble.
I'm not sure how much massaging the unemployment numbers have undergone over the past few decades--it's possible the picture is even worse for Ireland that it appears.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
Through the '80s and early '90s the unemployment rate was pretty high (by our standards). It fell during the tech boom of the late 90s, staying low until early 2008 when the rate very rapidly returned to the levels of the late 80s.
In earlier articles we have used the phase space reconstruction as a tool for interpreting the dynamics of the system. For ease of presentation, we limit our reconstructions to two dimensions even though we recognize that two dimensions is not sufficient for a true reconstruction. Below we see such a plot using the time delay method, with a lag of twelve months.
I'm not sure whether I would characterize the high unemployment as an area of stability, but you could make a pretty good argument for the highlighted area in the low unemployment section of the curve. The unemployment state occupied that tiny region of phase space for nearly six years.
One observation that favours a high-unemployment area of Lyapunov stability is the return to late-1980s levels of unemployment once the economic "miracle" collapsed.
Enlarging the lower part of the graph shows just how compressed the reconstructed phase space is for six years during the real estate bubble.
I'm not sure how much massaging the unemployment numbers have undergone over the past few decades--it's possible the picture is even worse for Ireland that it appears.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
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