Using EU-SILC to simulate Tax-Benefit Policies

Course Outline

      

Dr. Carlos Farinha Rodrigues

 

25 -28 june 2019 (15.00pm-18.00pm)

ROOM: 111 - Francesinhas 1  Building

 

Objectives:

 

The aim of the course is to provide academics, policy practitioners and other interested users with an introduction to the use of the European Union Statistics on Living Conditions (EU‐SILC) to simulate social and fiscal policies and to evaluate their redistributive impacts. The use of tax-benefit microsimulation technics, combining micro-data from household surveys and policy legislation allows to measure the impact of policy reforms in terms of inequality, poverty, Government expenditure and tax receipts.

 

Programme:

The course is organized in three main modules:

i) Overview of European Union Statistics on Living Conditions Dataset;

ii) Using EU-SILC to simulate tax-benefit policies; Presentation of Euromod as an integrated tax-benefit model based on EU-SILC.

 

At the end of the course, participants are expected to have a good understanding of how to use EU-SILC to simulate different policies and will have acquired detailed knowledge of and extensive hands-on experience in:

I. Data preparation and matching of survey data

II. Micro and macro data reconciliation:

III. Microsimulation and income distribution analysis

IV. Formulating scenarios and running policy simulations,

V. Reporting and interpreting the results.

 

The course uses a practical and very intensive approach to tax-benefit model building. The participants will acquire extensive practical experience in using EU-SILC. Basic understanding in statistical methods and Stata will be required.