The Directorate Generale for Employment at the European Commission hosted a one-day conference in Brussels highlighting recent policy-relevant analysis using EUROMOD and discussing the potential for assisting governments and policy makers worldwide, in assessing the impact of policy reform through microsimulation.
The Conference focussed on the unique potential of microsimulation models to understand the effects of policies and to assess the impact of a changing economic environment on budgetary costs and income distribution. Microsimulation has been used recently to examine and test the impact of policies on poverty, taxation, in work benefits, housing taxes, welfare reform and austerity measures.
Opening the Conference, Professor Holly Sutherland, Director of EUROMOD, described the long process of developing ISER’s state-of-the-art microsimulation model which can be used for cross country analyis as well as analysis at a country-level. The model has also been developed to produce similar microsimulation for other countries beyond the EU.
EUROMOD is now seen as a significant scientific tool which has great potential beyond the academic community in the design and development of evidence-based fiscal policies.
Recent research presented to the audience of over 150 policy makers from government departments and ministries from across Europe, included:
- The Distributional Effects of recent policy changes in EU countries – presented by Alari Paulus
- Crisis, Austerity and Automatic Stablilization – presented by Andreas Peichi
- Nowcasting At Risk of Poverty – presented by Olga Rastrigina
- Ex Ante Poverty and Fiscal Evaluation of a guaranteed minimum income programme in Greece – presented by Chrysa Leventi
- Were we all in together? The Distributional Effects of the UK Coalition Government’s tax benefit policy changes 2010-2014/5 – presented by John Hills.
The conference included a panel discussion chaired by Georg Fischer, Director for analysis, evaluation and external relations at DG Employment, with speakers including Laurent Caussat from Haut Conseil du Financement de la Protection Sociale, Enrico Giovannini from the University of Rome, Gallo Gueye from DG Eurostat, Gilles Mourre from DG ECFIN and Frank Vandenbroucke from KU Leuven.
Download Taking the European View: a review of recent research using EUROMOD
Supporting Documents
- EUROMOD Introduction and Overview
- Policy effects in 2013-14 on the Bulgarian income distribution
- The distributional effects of recent policy changes in EU countries
- Means-testing the Winter Fuel Allowance and increasing its amount in Scotland
- Increasing the Minimum Wage in Portugal
- Nowcasting risk of poverty in the EU
- Ex Ante Poverty and Fiscal Evaluation of a guaranteed minimum income programme in Greece