Second VNMOD retreat

The fifth training event on VNMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for Viet Nam, is organized as a five-day research retreat, intended to empower participants to use VNMOD to answer their own policy questions.

The retreat is composed of two parts: a refresher on the use of the model (2.5 days) and a retreat portion (2.5 days) where participants break out in groups, develop their own policy questions, model them using VNMOD, and examine and interpret the results.

The 2023 VNMOD retreat welcomes up to 8 participants from government and academia, such as the National Institute for Finance at the Ministry of Finance, General Statistics Office of Vietnam (GSO), the National Centre for Socio-economic Information and Forecast (NCIF), Viet Nam Institute for Economic and Policy Research (VEPR), and Vietnam National University (VNU).

The retreat is organized in Hanoi, Viet Nam, and delivered by the SOUTHMOD national team at the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) and UNU-WIDER Research Associate Jesse Lastunen. A key feature of the retreat is that the national team takes the lead in organizing and delivering the retreat.

The training event is geared towards writing SOUTHMOD Policy notes that are expected to be developed further after the retreat, and eventually disseminated to policymakers and other interested audiences. In addition to informing local policymakers at large, the policy notes serve to answer questions that are critical for the work of the participants themselves.

Similar to the first VNMOD retreat in 2022, the event also serves as a forum to help build a community of VNMOD users in Viet Nam, generate ownership of the model beyond the national team at CIEM, and expand the model userbase and expertise at relevant local institutions, including those that administer the policies modelled in VNMOD.

About the project

This initiative is part of UNU-WIDER's SOUTHMOD – simulating tax and benefit policies for development project. SOUTHMOD is part of UNU-WIDER's research and capacity development programme on domestic revenue mobilization (DRM), funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation (Norad).