Welcome to my website.
I am full professor at the Faculty of Business and Economics of KU Leuven, where I teach the courses “Principles of Economics”, “Public Finance” and “Welfare, Inequality and Poverty”. My research and publications broadly belong to “applied welfare analysis”. It concerns the construction and use of microsimulation models, with special focus on indirect taxes and labour supply; optimal taxation and the evaluation of tax reforms, with special focus on how to measure individual welfare; and empirical analysis of changes in inequality and/or poverty, both at the national and international level.
My research is based on the empirical analysis of micro data: household budget surveys, household income surveys, and administrative data. I coordinate the Belgian national team in the European network of microsimulation which develops and maintains the EUROMOD-model. Under the FLEMOSI-project we used our expertise in microsimulation to bring a EUROMOD version, tailored for Belgium and Flanders, online. We participate in a project led by the United Nations University WIDER in Helsinki to construct microsimulation models for several African countries. For the Flemish government we constructed a detailed model of personal income taxes (FANTASI) which runs on the fiscal declarations. Currently (2019) we are expanding EUROMOD with indirect taxes, and we are starting a new Belgian microsimulation model which will be based on administrative data.
I was born in Avelgem (Belgium) in 1958. Presently I live in Brussels (Schaarbeek)