This is a periodic newsletter of the interesting things we’ve seen and what we are thinking about in open source policy analysis.

How to calculate a budget-neutral UBI with open-source tools. Last week, OSPC’s Matt Jensen and Peter Metz set out to estimate the size of a budget-neutral universal basic income (UBI) if it were funded by repealing transfer and benefit programs and broadening the base of the individual income tax. Using Tax-Calculator,* Tax-Data,* and C-TAM,* Jensen and Metz found that these changes could fund a UBI of nearly $16,000 per year for adults and $8,000 per year for minors, with widely varying impacts across the income and age distribution. Link

AEI to host event on transparent policymaking. On January 27, Paul Ryan (AEI) will moderate a discussion on the effects of the Foundation for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (Evidence Act) on federal, state, and local policymaking. Signed into law in January 2019, the Evidence Act takes steps to make data public and open when possible and requires development of data inventories so that researchers and analysts can more easily navigate and understand publicly available data. Link

Examine your federal tax liabilities with Tax-Cruncher. A new AEI report introduces Tax-Cruncher,* an open-source tool that allows users to calculate their federal tax liabilities under current law and under a policy reform of their designing. Users can choose between the easy-to-use web application to analyze a single taxpayer and the Python API to analyze the effects of a tax reform on a group of taxpayers. Link and link

Policy Simulation Library (PSL) to host Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY). The upcoming PSL* meeting, hosted by OSPC at AEI on January 31, will feature a presentation from Marco Del Negro (FRBNY) on its open-source dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model (DSGE). The FRBNY uses its DSGE model to inform monetary policy by forecasting economic performance, explaining economic shocks, and conducting policy experiments. Link

Paid family leave for federal employees. Just in time for the new year, President Trump approved a measure that will give federal employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave. In a blog post, AEI’s Aparna Mathur and Erin Melly use PFL-CM* to estimate the cost of that policy if it were extended to all Americans. Link

* These projects are attendees or graduates of OSPC’s incubator program.

Edited by Matt Jensen and Peter Metz