International Microsimulation Association

The International Microsimulation Association was founded in October 2005 with the aim of advancing the field of microsimulation. Microsimulation is a technique developed by Guy Orcutt which uses individual level data to model economic and social outcomes. The important detail is that all the modelling is done at the individual level, allowing the person doing the modelling to identify impacts of an external factor, like Government Policy, on individuals, families, households, firms, etc. These impacts can then be aggregated, and the impact on different sub-groups of the population (eg, age, income group, etc) can be identified. In the field, this is called identifying the distributional impacts. The paper outlining Orcutt’s original vision is republished in the International Journal of Microsimulation.