Regional visas are a growing part of Australia’s skilled migration system. They are intended to support regional economies and ease pressure on major cities. However this analysis finds many regional visa holders are not in places the public may think of as 'regional'. It concludes that regional policy may not be having its desired effect.

There are various proposals regarding how to reform capital gains taxation in Australia. Using data on realised capital gains in 2022 for a subset of housing investors (those holding for between one and nine years) this paper describes how four different tax systems, including the current system, would have treated individuals differently.

Government policy often supports small businesses through lower taxes, lighter labour regulation and grants. Yet this paper finds it is actually young firms that play the most outsized role in economic dynamism in Australia. Using firm-level microdata, the paper draws out this important distinction between firm size and age in firms’ economic contribution, highlighting three...

This paper estimates the employment effects of the first six months of the JobKeeper program over the following year, which includes the height of the COVID‑19 recession in Australia and subsequent rapid recovery.