Tell us a bit about you - what is your background?

Slavko Bezeredi: I am a researcher at the Institute of Public Finance, Zagreb. I did my bachelor’s and master’s in Mathematics at the Faculty of Science-Department of Mathematics, University of Zagreb. I earned my PhD degree from the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb. My research interests include labour market, informal economy, microsimulation of taxes and social benefits and quantitative data analysis.

Ivica Urban: I work at the Institute of Public Finance, Zagreb, since 2002. I obtained my PhD degree from the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, in 2010. Primary topics of my research are measuring the distributive impact of tax-benefit systems and microsimulation of taxes and benefits.

When and what was your first contact with EUROMOD?

Slavko Bezeredi: My first contact with EUROMOD was the annual EUROMOD meeting in Bucharest in October 2012. In November of the same year, I also attended the EUROMOD introduction course in Essex, which gave me a great insight into all the functionalities of the EUROMOD program.

Ivica Urban: I think it was in 2008, when I attended the EUROMOD course at the University of Essex, in Colchester. I met all the wonderful “EUROMOD core” people there and the event definitely changed the course of my professional life. At that time EUROMOD was running through MS Excel, and to be honest, I was a little unwilling to use it after the course. However, I fell in love with the “standalone program” version, which immediately became my favourite tool.

What are your main responsibilities and what is your experience with EUROMOD?

Slavko Bezeredi: My main responsibilities are monitoring policy changes in the Croatian tax-benefit system, updating the model with policy changes and the macrovalidation of the model. I often use EUROMOD in my research, and it was also the main tool in writing my doctoral thesis.

Ivica Urban: I am the project leader. Slavko and I (team members since the start in 2013) tend to work on all segments of the project together, but I am more focused on input data preparation, model testing and correction, and Country Report preparation. EUROMOD is expanding into different directions, all of which I endorse, particularly the modelling of indirect taxes. The constant striving to make the software faster and capable is great in the light of researchers’ desire to use huge administrative databases.

Would you like to share any recent highlights for your country?

We are currently working on the scientific project “Impact of taxes and benefits on income distribution and economic efficiency”, financed by the Croatian Science Foundation. We use EUROMOD as part of our labour supply model, which will be used to estimate social preferences towards income redistribution in Croatia. We have devised a method to improve the credibility of survey data for tax-benefit microsimulation. Furthermore, a comprehensive model of direct taxes is being built, which will use administrative data and the EUROMOD software. All these tools and improvements are necessary to provide quality advice to domestic policy makers.