We are delighted to announce the appointment of Matteo Richiardi as the next Director of EUROMOD and Professor of Economics at the University of Essex.
Professor Richiardi will join Professor Holly Sutherland, the current Director of EUROMOD, for a four-month transition period from June to take over formally as Director in October 2018. Professor Sutherland, who has led EUROMOD and the pioneering microsimulation work at Essex since its inception 22 years ago, will continue as Research Professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex.
Professor Richiardi has been at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford for the past five years, and before that at the University of Torino in Italy. He has also worked as a consultant on labour market and social protection policies for the World Bank and national government agencies, and is the Chief Editor of the International Journal of Microsimulation.
EUROMOD is the tax benefit microsimulation model covering 28 countries in the European Union. Developed at Essex and used worldwide, it has become increasingly influential and is heavily used by the European Commission for policy formulation and analysis.
In recent years, the tool’s use has extended beyond the EU. EUROMOD’s flexibility – of approach and software – means that it can be adapted to shortcut the process of building tax-benefit models with potentially comparable outputs for any country or region. There are now models based on EUROMOD that have been developed for more than a dozen non-EU countries: Russia, Macedonia, Serbia, Australia, South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana, Ethiopia, Zambia, Vietnam, Colombia and Ecuador.
Professor Richiardi said:
“I am greatly honoured to be joining the EUROMOD team at the Institute for Social and Economic Research. EUROMOD is a terrific achievement, arguably the most successful example of microsimulation modelling for its wide country coverage, attention to model validation and cross-country consistency, institutional and scientific recognition.
I’m looking forward to exploring new collaborations with government agencies, think tanks and universities in the UK and abroad, further strengthening the reputation of ISER and Essex as the leading research institution for international microsimulation.”
Professor Holly Sutherland said: “I am delighted that Matteo will be taking over from me and I am confident that his vision for EUROMOD will ensure its future success. I am looking forward to working with him over the next few months.”
Welcoming the news of the appointment, Professor Emily Grundy, Director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research, said: “We are really pleased to have Matteo joining our senior team to lead ISER’s expertise in microsimulation research, at a very exciting time for EUROMOD. It has become an integral part of the policy evaluation process within the European Commission and has a worldwide reputation as an exemplar in microsimulation modelling.”