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Article 27 February 2009. MACMIC database
Analysing structural reforms and EU policies
MICREF. Database on Microeconomic Reforms
LABREF. Labour market reforms database
The EU Strategy for Growth and Jobs (Lisbon Strategy)
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The Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs

MACMIC - Database

MACMIC - Database of simulations/estimates of the macroeconomic impact of microeconomic reforms


The Lisbon strategy aims to promote structural reforms that can foster growth and employment through improved functioning of product, labour and financial markets and more innovation. But uncertainty about the effects of many structural reforms makes it difficult to design and implement effective reform strategies.

In order to reduce this technical uncertainty, the Commission has launched MACMIC. This database gathers the results of modelling exercises and econometric analyses that quantify the effect of microeconomic and structural reforms on macroeconomic variables.

MACMIC - A comprehensive database

This stocktaking exercise is designed to bring together in a single comprehensive, consistent and mutually comparable database the considerable body of existing evidence on the effects of reforms:


  • studies undertaken by DG ECFIN and other departments of the European Commission
    (notably the Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry (DG ENTR) and the DG for Employment , Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities (DG EMPL),
  • economic studies produced by international organisations such as the OECD, IMF, and other institutes, and
  • a significant body of academic research.

Aim of MACMIC

MACMIC is an analytical tool that can be used to help assess the impact of planned/enacted structural reforms in the context of the Lisbon strategy and to prioritise reform across policy areas.

MACMIC is intended to include any type of model-based simulations or econometric estimations on past data (time-series or panel) which show the impact of structural policies on the main macroeconomic variables (GDP, employment, wages, etc.).

The reported results are typically presented in the form of "reform multipliers", capturing the percentage response of the given macroeconomic variable compared with the baseline level, say GDP, to a given policy impulse.
The work should be seen as part of DG ECFIN's wider efforts to collect, organise and make available information on structural reforms that are being implemented in Member States.

MACMIC can be used for:

  • Policy making
    Caveats notwithstanding, MACMIC helps to determine a range of estimates on the impact of different types of reforms, and also give an idea of their robustness. Quantitative estimates of the impact of structural reforms could feed into the assessment of the impact of the Lisbon strategy in the run-up to the 2010 deadline and the debate on the future shape of the strategy after that.
  • Reference
    MACMIC also acts as an "encyclopaedia" of the existing evidence on the impact of microeconomic reforms on macroeconomic aggregates. It provides an overview of the existing empirical studies specifying in detail the reforms examined, the approach selected and the main results.

How to use MACMIC

You can download the Excel file embedding MACMIC. It contains a user-friendly interface from which information can be extracted on the basis of several selection criteria. For more details on how to use the interface please refer to the manual included in the file.
A fully-fledged web-based application is being built to replace the Excel file in the second half of 2009.

>> Zip file (12Mb) MacMic Interactive toolbox

Your feedback is welcome

MACMIC already contains a significant amount of data. However, DG ECFIN invites researchers who work on the effects of structural reforms to provide information on their findings for inclusion in MACMIC.

How to give us your feedback

Please send us your data on the form provided. We also welcome any comments on the results which are already included in the database – again, on the form provided, which should be sent back to us by e-mail.

After conducting a quick quality check, we will incorporate these changes into the master version.