We examine the effect of unconditional cash transfers by a unitary discrete labour supply model. We argue that there is no negative income effect of social transfers in the case of poor adults because leisure could not be assumed to be a normal good under such conditions. Using data from the national employment survey of Ecuador (ENEMDUR) we estimate the effect of the Bono de Desarrollo Humano (BDH). Results show that cash transfers, unconditional in labour, does not produce labour disincentives in the case of household heads, but may be paying for housework and childcare provided by partners and single adults. However, labour market and care work gender inequality must be addressed by complementary policies.

Traditionally, Ireland has reported high rates of admissions to acute psychiatric facilities for mental illness in general. However, data limitations mean that there has been no research on the role of access and proximity on rates of admissions to acute psychiatric facilities. The Simulation Model of the Irish Local Economy (SMILE) produces synthetic small-area-level microdata on self-reported rates of depression. The National Psychiatric Inpatient Reporting System (NPIRS) contains spatially referenced data on admissions to acute psychiatric services (both public and private) by diagnosis. Combining the NPIRS and SMILE datasets using propensity score-matching techniques produces a small-area profile of individuals with depression that includes those who have accessed an acute psychiatric facility as well as those who have not. Linking the NPIRS and SMILE datasets allows one to examine the differential characteristics that lead individuals with depression to seek acute psychiatric services and, importantly, to see if access to these services is a confounding factor. Our finding is that access, as measured in terms of road distance, has a significant positive impact on individuals with depression using an acute psychiatric facility.

In this paper, we survey the use of nowcasting methods in Microsimulation models. These nowcasting methods differ in a number of respects to the more established methods of forecasting. The main distinction is that while forecasting extrapolates from current data to estimate the future, the methods of nowcasting extrapolate from data of the recent past to reflect the present situation. In this paper, we undertake a survey of a number of modelling teams globally, selected for their experience and breadth of use with the methodologies of nowcasting and to ascertain the modelling choices made. Different methodologies are used to adjust the different components, with indexation or price uprating applied for the adjustments to growth in wages or prices, the updating of tax-benefit policy to adjust for policy change and either static or dynamic ageing to account for changes to the population and labour market structure. Our survey reports some of the choices made. We find that these model teams are increasingly utilising variants of these methods for short-term projections, which is relatively novel relative to the published literature.