Alignment is a widely adopted technique in the field of microsimulation for social and economic policy research. However, limited research has been devoted to understanding the statistical properties of the various alignment algorithms currently in use. This paper discusses and evaluates six...

Most existing microsimulation models have been developed by separate (teams of) researchers. The drawback of each team working on its own is that they have to put a lot of time and effort in the customary development of fairly general simulation tools. Hence, economies of scale cannot be...

In this paper, we survey the use of nowcasting methods in Microsimulation models. These nowcasting methods differ in a number of respects to the more established methods of forecasting. The main distinction is that while forecasting extrapolates from current data to estimate the future, the...

This paper considers utilising a cross-country microsimulation tax-benefit model for Europe, EUROMOD, to simulate the distribution of replacement rates for four European countries, Denmark, France, Spain and the UK. In particular we show the important role of household composition and the...

This paper studies the impact of changes in the external balance of Pakistan. We explain why the economic growth achieved during the past decade was highly dependent on improvements in the external balance. Between 2001 and 2007, Pakistan benefited from an increase in remittances, foreign...

The systems of direct taxes and cash benefits in the Member States of the European Union vary considerably in size and structure. We explore their direct impacts on cross-sectional income inequality (termed "redistributive effect" for the purpose of this paper) using EUROMOD, a tax-benefit...

This paper studies the impact of changes in the external balance of a developing economy (Pakistan). We explain that the economic growth achieved during the past decade is highly dependent on the improvements in external balance. Between 2001 and 2007 Pakistan has benefited from, an increase in...

Although demographic ageing will affect Ireland later than many EU countries, by 2050 it will result in significant pressures on the public pension system. Recent reform in Ireland has attempted to address these pressures by increasing the incentive to save for retirement and by introducing...

Household micro-datasets often do not contain information on gross incomes. We present an algorithm which exploits the tax- and contribution rules built into tax-benefit models to convert net income information into gross amounts. Using EUROMOD, a multi-country taxbenefit model covering all...

This paper considers the methodology of measuring replacement rates, comparing simulation based approaches, which simulate replacement rates for a representative sample of the population, with other approaches that simulate replacement rates for "typical" families or are entirely based on...