Conference Program

Warning

The conference program can still be subject of changes, and this website serves as the single source of truth for the conference program. Stay tuned and check the program regularly.

Conference program

Info

Practical arrangements parallel sessions:

  • 25 minutes per presentation + 5 minutes for questions
  • the last presenter is session chair
  • install your presentation onto the laptop in the room during the coffee break before your session

  • July 1st
  • July 2nd
  • July 3rd

Conference program July 1st.

On July 1st, we will organize a pre-conference workshop on the topic of synthetic data for microsimulation.

Practical details:

  • Fee: This pre-conference workshop comes with a €35 additionnal participation fee, which covers a lunch and 2 coffee breaks.
  • Registration for the pre-conference workshop is mandatory, and can be selected in the registration process.
  • Room: Welcome and workshop in room P61, coffee and lunch in room P61
  • Chair Tom Truyts (CAPE - UCLouvain Saint-Louis)

Program:

Time?Who?Presentation?
08:30 - 09:00Welcome and coffee!/
09:00 - 09:30Ralf Münnich (University of Trier)Digital twins: challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities
09:30 - 10:00Nik Lomax (Leeds University)Creating and Utilising Synthetic Population Data: Examples, Innovations and Pitfalls
10:00 - 10:30Pierre-Olivier Vandanjon (Université Gustave Eiffel)Generating Synthetic Populations for Transportation: A Variational Autoencoder Approach
10:30 - 10:45Coffee!
10:45 - 11:15Cédric Heuchenne (CAPE - UCLouvain Saint-Louis)Enhanced data fusion and anonymization for microsimulation systems
11:15 - 11:45Paul Tiwald (Former Mostly.ai)Data Without Barriers: Synthetic Data as a Catalyst for Responsible Innovation
11:45 - 12:00Discussion
12:00 - 13:00Lunch!

Opening of the 2026 IMA World Congress

  • Philippe Liégeois (President IMA)
  • Tom Truyts (Local organizing committee)

“Living with High Inflation: The Distributional Impact of the Cost of Living Crisis in Türkiye” - Cathal O’Donoghue and Zeynep Gizem Can

Abstract: Türkiye experienced the highest inflation experience in the OECD during the cost of living crisis during the cost of living crisis in the early mid-2020s. While the European Union inflation rate was 9.2% in 2022, declining to 6.4% in 2023 and 2.6% for 2025 - Eurostat, year on year inflation peaked at 85% in Türkiye in October 2022 and with annual inflation remaining above 65% at the end of 2023 before dipping to about 45% at the end of 2024 - Turkstat. Such large price changes impact the income distribution in many ways. In this presentation, we describe a portfolio of research that has employed microsimulation based decomposition methods to disentangle the impact of large macro-economic changes on inequality. The research begins by describing the historical macro-economic volatility that Türkiye. Using the new ARIA microsimulation model we undertake a variety of different analyses focusing on different dimensions. We begin by examining the distribution of price changes before the crisis and after the peak crisis in 2022. We then explore the policy response in terms of the poverty effectiveness efficiency and the poverty gap efficiency social transfers, which as an archetypal Southern European Welfare state mainly focuses on pension age work replacement benefits. With a progressive income tax system, we explore the nature of the fiscal drag within the system during this period. We contrast it with impact of price change on the regressive indirect tax system. With data from before the crisis and peak-crisis, we are employ a unique decomposition of the consumption and savings response during the crisis, emphasising in particular the differential savings response and the importance of durables as a source of hedging inflation for high income households on the one hand and the prioritisation of necessities by low income households. Furthermore, we explore the inequality increasing nature of the labour market, where some sectors have been resilient to price inflation in terms of wage growth, combined with other sectors that have not. A key conclusion is the distributional impact of price change has a greater impact when behavioural responses are considered than the literature that focuses on pre-behavioural response. As a result the consumption patterns have a greater impact than income changes.

Cathal O’Donoghue: Cathal O’Donoghue has been from 2016, the Established Chair of Social and Public Policy, located in the Disciplines of Geography and Economics at the University of Galway. He has been the Chair of the National Museum of Ireland since 2024 From 2016-2021, he was the Dean of Arts and Social Sciences. Prior to this he was since 2005, Head of Teagasc’s - Irelands Agriculture and Food Development Authority - Rural Economy and Development Programme. He was a member of the Fund Council of CGIAR, a $1 billion a year International Agri-Food Research organisation from 2014-2016. In 2023, he published his Forestry Economic Strategy for Ireland From 2012-2014, he was CEO of the Irish Government’s Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas 2012-2014, Chairman of the Irish Sport Horse Strategy Committee 2013-2015, was President of the International Microsimulation Association 2011-2015 and was on the Executive of the UK Agricultural Economics Society. From 2021-2024 he was Chair of the Foundation Board of the RDS. He was also a member of the Board of the National Museum of Ireland, a member of the Board of Music for Galway and Chair of the Galway Music Centre. Since 2022, he has been Vice Chair of the Royal Irish Academy Social Science Committee. He is a UCC graduate, a Statistician and Economist by training, with post graduate degrees from Oxford, UCD, the LSE, and Warwick, having worked previously at the ESRI, UK Government Economics Service, the University of Cambridge and NUI Galway. His personal research programme involves the development and use of policy simulation models, for which he holds a Chair - extra ordinary (adjunct) - at the University of Maastricht, as well as an adjunct position in UCD. He has published over 200 research papers, 5 books and supervised over 50 PhD students to completion. He has been an advisor to many international organisations and was a long term advisor to the UK Government’s Department of Work and Pensions on policy modelling earlier in his career.

Zeynep Gizem Can: is an Associate Professor at Adana Alparslan Türkeş Science and Technology University with a PhD in economics. Her work focuses on microsimulation, poverty, inequality, income distribution, and sustainability. She leads the Bioeconomy project at the University of Galway, sits on the board of the International Microsimulation Association, collaborates with WHO, OECD, and UNDP, and has published widely in international journals and EU projects.

Parallel session 1

1A - Methods 1 - Room A (1100) (Session chair: Andreas Trauner)

1B - Behaviour and Labour 1 - Room B (1200) (Session chair: Nizamul Islam)

1C - Environment & Natural Resources 1 - Room C (1300) (Session chair: Stijn Van Houtven)

1D - Health 1 - Room D (2100) (Session chair: Mariia Vartuzova)

1E - Static 1 - Room E (2200) (Session chair: Hugo Cruces)

1F - Tutorial Session 1 Room F(2300)

Coffee break - Room P12

Coffee, conversations and connections — gather at P12 for our networking moments.

Parallel session 2

2A - Behaviour and Labour 2 - Room A (1100) (Session chair: Gerlinde Verbist)

2B - Cross-border Microsimulation - Room B (1200) (Session chair: Maria Juaristi)

2C - Environment & Natural Resources 2 - Room C (1300) (Session chair: Gilles Grandjean)

2D - Health 2 - Room D (2100) (Session chair: Jussi Tervola)

2E - Static 2 - Room E (2200) (Session chair: Tine Hufkens)

2F - Tutorial Session 2 Room F(2300)

Drinks - Social Mixer - Room P12

Work ends. The afterwork begins.

Attention: the pre-conference workshop on synthetic data requires specific registration and come with a small extra fee to cover for lunch and coffee breaks…

Conference program July 2nd.

Morning coffee - Room P12

“A Step Beyond Microsimulation: Agent-Based Modelling of the English Housing Market” - Nigel Gilbert, University of Surrey

Abstract: Housing markets are very important in modern societies because of their effect on households’ ability to find suitable accommodation at an affordable price and because of they lock in huge amounts of wealth, often in a way that is highly unequal. As a result, in many countries, and specifically in England, housing policy is a highly contentious and difficult issue. In this presentation, I will consider how one might model the English Housing market, from simple statistical approaches, through microsimulation and agent-based modelling, and illustrate the latter with a description of an agent-based model that has been developed over the last two decades and now incorporates owner-occupation, the rental sector, social housing and buy-to-lets. The model allows the testing of the implications on market prices and rents of a range of actual and proposed policies, such as changing the basis of property ‘council’ taxes, a ‘mansion’ tax on expensive properties, and transaction taxes, such as the English stamp duty land tax. I will comment on the advantages of using an agent-based modelling approach, but also on the problems and difficulties we had to overcome to obtain a working and validated model and suggest avenues for future development.

Nigel Gilbert: Professor Nigel Gilbert is a pioneer in agent-based simulation methods in social sciences, and founder and former editor of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS), the leading journal in the field. He has been one of the founders and driving forces of computational sociology, and pioneer of the use of simulation methods for public policy evaluation. With Klaus G. Troitzsch, he published Simulation for the Social Scientist (1999), a hands-on textbook on different simulation techniques in social sciences, and Agent-based Models (2008), a standard reference in the field. Professor Gilbert is uniquely positioned to shed his light on the position of microsimulation modelling and its cousins such as agent-based simulation in a rapidly evolving technological context. He is Distinguished Professor of Computational Sociology at the University of Surrey, UK.

Coffee break - Room P12

Recharge, reconnect, and network — see you at P12.

Parallel session 3

3A - Health 3 - Room A (1100) (Session chair: Zeynep Gizem Can)

3B - Behaviour and Labour 3 - Room B (1200) (Session chair: Léa Jacquet)

3C - Dynamic and Pensions 1 - Room C (1300) (Session chair: David Sonnewald)

3D - Spatial 1 - Room D (2100) (Session chair: Ana Montes-Vinas)

3F - Tutorial Session 3 Room F(2300)

Lunch - Room P12

Parallel session 4

4A - Tax Analysis - Room A (1100) (Session chair: Francesca Gastaldi)

4B - Dynamic and Pensions 2 - Room B (1200) (Session chair: Tanja Kirn)

4C - Environment & Natural Resources 3 - Room C (1300) (Session chair: François Meuwissen)

4D - Static 3 - Room D (2100) (Session chair: Iris Wohnsiedler)

Coffee break - Room P12

Recharge, reconnect, and network — see you at P12.

Parallel session 5

5A - Methods 2 - Room A (1100) (Session chair: Andrew Singleton)

5B - Behaviour and Labour 4 - Room B (1200) (Session chair: Hannes Serruys)

5C - Dynamic and Pensions 3 - Room C (1300) (Session chair: Felix von Heusinger)

5D - Static 4 - Room D (2100) (Session chair: Zuzana Siebertova)

Coffee break - Room P12

Recharge, reconnect, and network — see you at P12.

Round table on Advances and Challenges in Microsimulation in Government

  • Chair: Cathal O’Donoghue
  • Panelists:
    • Denis Beninger (Federal Planning Bureau - Belgium)
    • Leonardo Calcagno (Agirc-Arrco - France)
    • Zuzana Siebertova (Council for Budget Responsibility - Slovakia)
    • Dave Pankhurst (Department of Work and Pensions - United Kingdom)
    • Tine Hufkens (Federal Public Service Social Security - Belgium)

IMA General Assembly

More information coming soon…

IMA Gala dinner and dance

  • 19:00 – 20:00 | Welcome Drinks
  • 20:00 – 22:00 PM | Seated Dinner - refined three course dinner adapted to dietary needs.

Drinks included during dinner. Cash bar available during the evening party.

Dance night - DJ Set by BöKY

We close the evening in style with BöKY.

Böky has played DJ sets in many internationally reknowned clubs, from Las Vegas, Instanbul, Athens, Florence to Amsterdam, and at many major festivals including Tomorrowland, Pukkelpop, Best Kept Secret and many more. On July 2nd, he will bring juicy beats for all ages to the ‘26 IMA World Congress.

DJ Böky

Drinks included during dinner. Cash bar available during the evening party.

Conference program July 3rd.

Morning coffee

Keynote 3 Microsimulation to the aid of democracy: the case of Beamm - Hélène Latzer & Tom Truyts

Abstract: Liberal democracy faces mounting challenges as polarisation, social media-driven filter bubbles, and AI-enabled disinformation increasingly erode the shared factual reality that any functioning democracy requires as its epistemological foundation. Citizens increasingly inhabit separate factual worlds — and democratic deliberation degenerates into a contest of narratives rather than a debate grounded in commonly agreed consequences.

Tax-benefit policy lies at the heart of these tensions. Fiscal systems are extraordinarily complex and opaque, making fiscal debates particularly vulnerable to ideological distortion in the absence of accessible, shared analytical tools. This keynote argues that microsimulation is uniquely well positioned to help rebuild such a shared factual foundation: by working directly on representative microdata and computing actual rules on actual household heterogeneity, it produces results that are simultaneously accurate, comprehensive, transparent, and communicable — the structural antithesis of the partisan epistemic ecosystem.

We illustrate this democratic potential through the Beamm project (Belgian Arithmetic Microsimulation Model, target="_blank"

www.beamm.brussels), a cloud-native, open-access tax-benefit microsimulation platform designed as a public good for democratic deliberation. We discuss in particular the methodological challenges that online and open deployment impose: the need to generate a fully synthetic yet statistically faithful population dataset — combining administrative and survey microdata through statistical matching algorithms and generative AI — that can be hosted in the cloud without compromising the confidentiality of sensitive administrative records. We conclude by arguing that the microsimulation community bears a democratic responsibility, and has the tools, to treat open-access national platforms as a form of international public infrastructure for democratic deliberation.

Hélène Latzer: Hélène is a professor in Economics at the UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles. She obtained her PhD in Economics and Management Sciences from the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in 2010. She is currently director of the Center for Economic Research (CEREC), and member of the Center for Applied Public Economics (CAPE). Her domains of expertise are Macroeconomics, International Economics and Economic Growth, and she currently co-directs the Beamm project.

Tom Truyts Tom is a professor of public economics at the UCLouvain Saint-Louis - Bruxelles. He is director of the Center for Applied Public Economics (CAPE) and a member of the Center for Research in Economics (CEREC). Tom’s research interest are in public economics, data science, tax design, transport economics and environmental economics. Former research topics include game theory, auction theory and economic history. Tom is also co-director of the Beamm project.

Coffee break

More information coming soon…

Parallel session 6

6A - Methods 3 - Room A (1100) (Session chair: Martin Spielauer)

6B - Dynamic and Pensions 4 - Room B (1200) (Session chair: Rupendra Shrestha)

6C - Behaviour and Labour 5 - Room C (1300) (Session chair: Jürgen Wiemers)

6D - Static 5 - Room D (2100) (Session chair: Letizia Ravagli)

6F - Tutorial Session 4 Room F(2300)

Lunch - Room P12

Parallel session 7

7A - Methods 4 - Room A (1100) (Session chair: Tijs Laenen)

7B - Dynamic and Pensions 5 - Room B (1200) (Session chair: Tomas Miklosovic)

7C - Behaviour and Labour 6 - Room C (1300) (Session chair: Audin ROGER)

7D - Static 6 - Room D (2100) (Session chair: Johannes Derboven)

Coffee break

Recharge, reconnect, and network — see you at P12.

Parallel session 8

8A - Static 7 - Room A (1100) (Session chair: Karina Doorley)

8B - Comparative Dynamic Microsimulation - Room B (1200) (Session chair: Doug Manuel)

8C - Environment & Natural Resources 4 - Room C (1300) (Session chair: Zeynep Gizem Can)

8D - Methods 5 - Room D (2100) (Session chair: Andreas Trauner)

Conference closure

More information coming soon…

Warning

Tutorial sessions: Installation instructions..
For the tutorial sessions, we expect participants to bring their own laptops. For some tutorials, the installation of some software will be necessary.
We ask all participants of the tutorials to install the necessary software on their laptop prior to the tutorial session. Installation instructions can be found here.