MICROWAVE: A GENERIC FRAMEWORK FOR MICRO SIMULATIONBASED EX ANTE POLICY EVALUATION

This paper presents the MicroWave approach that has been developed to improve the process of modeling in the context of micro simulation. It leads to a more efficient model development, better quality of models and their output and improvement in knowledge management. A conceptual framework has been developed and translated into a hierarchical structure of GAMS program code. Besides, several software applications and other tools have been developed for support. These products are presented and some examples illustrate how MicroWave can be applied. MicroWave is especially useful in interdisciplinary research in which different persons are involved in the modeling process and when different models have to be combined.