Content and objectives
This course is a practical course that aims to equip students to use quantitative (microsimulation) modelling techniques to design policy reforms. The course will revolve around a case-study of designing a Poverty Reduction Strategy in developing countries. Initial lectures will focus on the World Bank/IMF Poverty Reduction Strategy Program. Students will then be introduced to tax-benefit policy reform in developed and developing countries, microsimulation modelling, measurement issues in policy evaluation and behavioural response to policy reform. The objective of the course will be for students to evaluate tax-benefit policy in a developing country and to design a set of policy reforms focused on poverty, the environment and child labour. Students will utilise an EXCEL based microsimulation model of Pakistan to carry out this analysis. No previous experience in public economics, modelling or EXCEL is required.

Literature

• François Bourguignon, Francisco H. G. Ferreira and Phillippe G. Leite, 2003, “Conditional Cash Transfers, Schooling and Child Labor: Micro-Simulating Bolsa Escola”, DELTA Working Paper 2003-07

• Bourguignon, François, and Luiz A. Pereira da Silva. 2003. The Impact of Economic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution: Evaluation Techniques and Tools. World Bank and Oxford University Press, Washington, D.C. and New York. http://www1.worldbank.org/publications/pdfs/15491frontmat.pdf

• Cockburn, J. Trade liberalisation and poverty in Nepal: A Computable General Equilibrium Micro Analysis. Discussion paper 01-18, Centre de Recherche en  Économie et Finance Appliquées (Université Laval), October 2001. http://www.crefa.ecn.ulaval.ca/cahier/0118.pdf 

• Davies, Jim, Microsimulation, CGE and Macro Modelling for Transition and Developing Economies, mimeo, University of Western Ontario, 2004.

• O’Donoghue, C., 2005. Social Policy Modelling Lecture Notes. Circulated in Advance of Lectures