Rising cost-of-living pressures continue to strain household budgets across Australia and policymakers require timely and reliable measures of financial hardship. This paper introduces a new high-frequency indicator of financial stress derived from failed direct debit payments in bank transaction data. This indicator could offer policymakers an early warning indicator of financial stress and inform targeted...

This paper highlights five economic themes emerging from the shifting global order and likely to shape Australia's policy debate in the coming years. It aims to assist policymakers as they adapt to the new global order and tackle domestic pressures by framing the big policy challenges and identifying where policy needs to adapt.

This paper investigates an underexplored trade-off in policy design: how measures encouraging work among the older population can unintentionally impact their offspring’s fertility rates. It finds that the unintended impact on the birth rate is comparable to that observed with the introduction of paid parental leave policies.

This paper examines how two major policies responding to the COVID-19 pandemic affected the wellbeing of eligible recipients, one that increased liquidity by releasing personal savings and one that increased wealth through a government transfer. The findings suggest the former raised life satisfaction while the latter did not.

The JobSeeker Coronavirus Supplement was designed to support households that experienced job loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper found that these higher benefit payments lead to a change in labour market behaviour, reducing the incentive for people to work. It provides three lessons from the research.