The Arithmetic of Tax and Social Security Reform: A User's Guide to Microsimulation Methods and Analysis

Tax-benefit models are powerful tools for the analysis of the impact of policy reform, in regular use around the world in government and research organizations. This study focuses on one particular model, POLIMOD. The authors provide an illustration of the type of analysis that can be performed, document the inner layers of data manipulation and model construction that shape its outputs, and examine the reliability of those outputs based on a validation against external sources.