An introduction to CeMPA

At the beginning of June 2020 the University of Essex announced the creation of a new Centre for Microsimulation and Policy Analysis (CeMPA), based at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER)

CeMPA 1 brings together the expert team at ISER with colleagues from different departments at the University of Essex, including Mathematics, Computer Science, Data Analytics, Sociology and Economics, joined by colleagues from leading institutions around the world.

CeMPA research on distributional issues, from tax and benefit systems to family, gender, health, wellbeing, and population change, focuses around two tools developed over the years and that are offered open source to the scientific community, with a wide range of models and applications: the static microsimulation platform EUROMOD, now jointly developed with the European Commission, and the dynamic microsimulation platform JAS-mine.

In the autumn of 2020, CeMPA will also launch the School for Advanced Microsimulation Studies to provide short courses on static and dynamic microsimulation modelling and agent-based modelling.

Microsimulation in the social sciences is structured around three approaches: • static modelling (mostly tax-benefit), tailored to short-term analyses with a fixed population • dynamic modelling, more geared towards long-term projections with an evolving population • agent-based modelling, focused on the effects of social and economic interactions between individual units. CeMPA is in the unique position to be very strong in all these areas – a comprehensive home of microsimulation.

The activities of CeMPA are structured around three core streams: UKMOD and WORLDMODS, rooted in the static modelling approach; and DYNAMODS, evolving from the dynamic microsimulation and agent-based modelling tradition.

UKMOD and WORLDMODS follow directly from the EUROMOD experience and mark a new focus on non-EU models. DYNAMODS is a galaxy of dynamic models following common components, with the distinctive feature of integrating static tax-benefit calculators within a dynamic context and merging dynamic microsimulation and agent-based techniques.

A key feature of CeMPA, embedded in the EUROMOD and JAS-mine microsimulation tools, is a cross-country comparative perspective, now extended beyond the EU member states to reach a truly ‘global view’.

CeMPA brings together the expert team at ISER with colleagues from different departments at the University of Essex… joined by colleagues from leading institutions around the world.