Australians hold some of the highest levels of mortgage debt in the world. This paper examines what is widely considered to be one of the strongest channels of monetary policy transmission into household spending – the effect of changes in mortgage payments when mortgage rates are linked to the short-term policy rate.

Australian states and territories independently implemented school closures as part of Australia’s successful COVID-19 elimination strategy. In this paper, the authors estimate the causal effect of pandemic school closures on standardised test scores in Australia, using variation in the length of school closures.