In times of crisis, real-time indicators of economic activity are a critical input to timely and well-targeted policy responses. The authors of this paper have developed a ‘news sentiment index’ that measures the net balance of words expressing positive and negative sentiment used by journalists in news articles about the economy. This indicator can be...

In response to the sharp fall in economic activity in the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Australian government announced a series of measures to support incomes and employment. The largest was the JobKeeper payment - a wage subsidy to help keep employees and firms connected. In this paper, the authors explore what effect...

The 2019 Consumer Payments Survey (CPS) showed that Australians are continuing to switch to electronic payment methods in preference to cash for their day-to-day transactions. More recently, the switch to electronic payment methods is likely to have accelerated as a result of consumer and merchant responses to COVID-19.

It is often observed that the level of household debt (relative to income) is high in Australia compared with other countries and its own history. Concerns about how this will influence the economy’s ability to navigate a major downturn have for many years been central to understanding the resilience of the Australian economy. This paper...

Planning regulations restrict the supply of apartments and hence drive up their price. This effect can be measured by the difference between the price of new apartments and the cost of supplying them. This paper measures the excess demand for apartments in Australia's largest cities.