April 2021 Newsletter

This is a monthly newsletter of PSL model releases, events, and updates.
Subscribe at https://www.pslmodels.org and follow us on Twitter @PSLModels.

Demo Days

Recent presentations

• Jason DeBacker demonstrated how to analyze stacked reforms using Tax-Calculator and Tax-Brain.
• PSL Blog published an accompanying post showing how to implement the analysis using Tax-Calculator's Python API.

Cost-of-Capital-Calculator

A model that evaluates the effect of US federal taxes on businesses' investment incentives

Releases and new features

• Release 1.2.7  —  Added parameterization for 2013 and 2014 tax laws (#343).
• The package is now available on conda forge. Install with conda install -c conda-forge ccc.

General updates

• A Tax Foundation study used a methodology modified from the U.S. Congressional Budget Office and the Cost-of-Capital-Calculator to analyze investment incentive effects of the U.K.’s new budget and tax legislation.

PCI-China

A machine learning algorithm that predicts China's policy changes by mining its state-controlled media

Releases and new features

• 2021 Q1 update  —  Discussing predictions on China's post-COVID priorities and possible military aggressions.

Tax-Brain

An integrator package for multiple open source tax models

General updates

• Used in a UBI Center study to analyze a bill that would provide some low- and middle-income California adults a guaranteed income.

PCI-Crackdown ^*

General updates

• Presented at the International Studies Association's annual convention.

PCI-Outbreak ^*

A machine learning algorithm that estimates the true scale of epidemic outbreaks in China

General updates

• Presented at the Western Political Science Association's annual conference.

• Behavioral-Responses is a partial-equilibrium behavioral module that works with Tax-Calculator.
• Cost-of-Capital-Calculator evaluates the effect of US federal taxes on businesses' investment incentives.
• microdf is a package for analyzing economic microdata as pandas DataFrames.
• OG-USA is an overlapping-generations model for evaluating fiscal policy in the United States.
• OpenFisca-UK is a model of the United Kingdom's tax system based on the OpenFisca platform.
• ParamTools is a library for parameter processing and validation with a focus on computational modeling projects.
• PCI-China is a machine learning algorithm that predicts China's policy changes by mining its state-controlled media.
• TaxData is a library that prepares microdata files to be used by Tax-Calculator.
• Tax-Brain is an integrator package for multiple open source tax models.
• Tax-Calculator is a USA federal individual income and payroll tax microsimulation model.
• Tax-Cruncher calculates federal tax liabilities from individual data under a range of policy scenarios.