Dr. Joseph Kopecky

Summary

This project aims to construct a tool for dynamic macroeconomic policy analysis for Ireland. We are building on existing overlapping generations models that have been used for dynamic fiscal policy analysis (dynamic scoring) in the US and other countries to study the effects of long run population change on macroeconomic fiscal policy. This framework is quite different than the policy tools currently employed for fiscal analysis by the ESRI and Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, and we believe will provide a complementary perspective to existing structural modelling (eg the COSMO model). Our goal is that this tool will be useful not only for the proposed question or population ageing, but for a wide range of macroeconomic areas. The planned output is an open source tool that can be used in collaboration with other Irish policy institutes to contribute to existing analysis and evaluation of current and future Irish macroeconomic policy. With my PhD student brought in under the award Giorgia Conte we have assembled and cleaned the relevant calibration data which we will use to calibrate the existing model for Ireland. In the coming year we will apply this to the question of fiscal sustatinability under population aging. Our roadmap beyond that initial paper is to reach out to other fiscal policy researchers to assess areas for future growth and collaboration of the project.

Funding Agency

Provost Project PhD Award