Simulator of Individual Dynamic Decisions (SIDD)

The Simulator of Individual Dynamic Decisions (SIDD) is a modelling project that has been in development at NIESR since 2002.  Its purpose is to make current best practice economic analysis of savings and labour supply decisions accessible to non-specialists.  It has also been designed to reduce the set-up costs involved in adapting such methods to alternative economic contexts.  They have made the SIDD model freely available  with the objective of increasing the policy impact of this exciting field of microeconomic research.

This document provides an overview of programming code that underlies the Simulator of Individual Dynamic Decisions (SIDD). SIDD is designed to implement a structural model of dynamic decisions, focussing predominantly on the consumption/savings and labour/leisure margins. The structural model upon which SIDD is based assumes that individuals make their decisions to maximise the expected lifetime utility of their respective families. Importantly, SIDD is designed to solve lifetime decisions, taking into account uncertainty associated with a wide range of characteristics. (originally published 10/02/2015)