Issue 34, February 2024

EUROMOD is a tax-benefit microsimulation model for the European Union (https://euromod-web.jrc.ec.europa.eu/), open-source since December 2020, and since 2021 is maintained, developed, and managed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, in collaboration with Eurostat and national teams from the EU countries. EUROMOD can be used in many different ways in different contexts, and with different approaches and goals. For example, researchers and policy analysts are increasingly using it to calculate, in a comparable manner, the effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes and work incentives for the population of each country and for the EU as a whole. Meanwhile, a less-known aspect is its enormous potential for use as a teaching tool in different academic disciplines, from public economics to comparative social policy. For this reason, e-pública, in collaboration with the Encuentro de Economía Pública and the Joint Research Centre have collected teaching experiences that are being carried out or can be implemented with EUROMOD and are related to the field of public economics in a broad sense. As EUROMOD is kept up to date with all the public policies implemented by European Union countries, it can serve as a basis for the classroom work by lecturers interested in the subject.

This article provides an overview of EUROMOD, a tax-benefit microsimulation model for the European Union and explores its main uses for research and policy analysis and its great potential as a tool for teaching in the field of public economics. The article discusses the multiple functionalities of EUROMOD, including its ability to compute the effects of tax-benefit systems on household incomes and its use for the assessment of distributional, redistributive, and poverty impacts of tax-benefit policies. The article highlights how EUROMOD can be used for teaching public economics, including the use of training data, the Hypothetical Household Tool, and the EUROMOD Online simulator. The article concludes by emphasizing the potential of EUROMOD as an educational tool to enhance students' understanding of tax-benefit systems and their fiscal and distributional impact.

This article presents a novel teaching practice that introduces students to the use of microsimulators to evaluate tax reforms. Specifically, this activity uses the EUROMOD Online platform, a simplified online version of EUROMOD that allows students to get started, in an intuitive and simple way, in the microsimulation and evaluation of tax (and/or social benefit) reforms in terms of revenue and redistributive impact. The teaching practice (simulation, oral presentation + debate) was carried out with students of the subject "Tax System and Economic Development" of the Master’s Degree in Economic Development and Public Policies of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Once the practice was completed, an online questionnaire was carried out through Moodle to know the students' assessment. The results show a high degree of satisfaction with the teaching practice, especially regarding the final debate in which the results obtained in the different simulations are discussed and the students reach a consensus on a joint public policy recommendation.

In the field of economic research, the use of quantitative techniques and representative and harmonized databases that help understand the socioeconomic reality is very important, especially in the field of public economics, where it is essential to have ex-ante evaluation of the policies carried out by the different public administrations. The objective of the teaching application presented is, first of all, to link the theoretical knowledge of the subjects taught with practical applications, specifically in the fiscal and distributive aspects of policies. Secondly, it seeks to encourage student interest and participation in the classroom, which will have a positive impact on their learning. Finally, it aims to be a tool to promote interest in quantitative research in the field of public economics. To address these objectives, the EUROMOD microsimulation model will be applied in two different scenarios, in a subject of the Economics degree, and in a subject of a postgraduate degree linked to Public Economics, so that the level of difficulty can be adapted to each case.

This paper uses EUROMOD Online as a tool that teachers in the field of public economics can use to familiarise their students with the microsimulation of taxes and monetary transfers. EUROMOD Online, which is free to use, allows for the analysis of the effects on tax collection, redistribution, and poverty. In order to explain how the tool works and to highlight its potential in a didactic way, fifteen questions are posed that could arise for any user. The questions are answered by means of practical examples to resolve issues related to the settlement of the current tax-benefit system and to the simulation of reforms, using basic concepts associated with the measurement of changes in the distribution of income and their effects.