In the microsimulation literature, it is still uncommon to test the statistical significance of results. In this article we argue that this situation is both undesirable and unnecessary. Provided the parameters used in the microsimulation are exogenous, as is often the case in static...

Several strategies are used to explain emergent interaction patterns in agent-based simulations. A distinction can be made between simulations in which the agents just behave in a reactive way, and simulations involving agents with also pro-active (goal-directed) behavior. Pro-active behavior is...

Answers of sample survey respondents to questions like the following one: "In the circumstances of your household, what income would you regard as the minimum (or good/bad/sufficient, etc.) for your household?" can be used to estimate equivalence scales. It is sometimes claimed that this is a...

Welfare states are said to have evolved over the course of the past twenty years towards a ‘social investment’ model of welfare, characterised by a focus on equality of opportunity and upward social mobility combined with greater emphasis on individual responsibility. More or less...

Reference budgets could play an important role in the work of measuring poverty and assessing income adequacy, and in the process of monitoring social inclusion policies in the European Union. As the reference budgets that are already constructed in some European countries are all developed...

This paper considers the measurement of poverty in the European Union (EU). Starting from a definition of poverty that is suitable for the European context, a flexible measurement framework is proposed based on the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke class of poverty measures. Three key issues need to be...

In the microsimulation literature, it is still uncommon to test the statistical significance of results. In this note we argue that this situation is both undesirable and unnecessary. Provided the parameters used in the microsimulation are exogenous, as is often the case in static...

In the microsimulation literature, it is still uncommon to test the statistical significance of results. In this paper we argue that this situation is both undesirable and unnecessary. Provided the parameters used in the microsimulation are exogenous, as is often the case in static...

This paper discusses how to take assets into account in the measurement of poverty. First asset holdings of current income-poor households are described. Second, the effects on the measured incidence of poverty of two methods to combine income and assets into a single index of economic resources...