See who your policy actually helps.
Connect open data to policy models. See distributional impact. No coding, no waiting.
The data is there.
The tooling isn't.
Every year, governments design policies that affect millions — energy subsidies, carbon taxes, social transfers. But the people making those decisions almost never have the tools to check: Who benefits? Who loses? Is the targeting right?
The data exists. It's public. But it's scattered across dozens of sources, too large for spreadsheets, and requires technical skills that policy teams don't have. So they outsource to researchers and wait months. Or they don't check at all.
"Policies worth billions go live without anyone knowing who they actually reach."
How it works
ReformLab handles the full pipeline — from open data ingestion to decision-ready reports.
Select your data
Connect to French and European open data sources — INSEE, Eurostat, EU-SILC — without downloading, cleaning, or joining files yourself.
Skip: Download raw files. Write jointure scripts. Debug encoding issues.
Define your policy
Pick from scenario templates (carbon tax, energy subsidies, social transfers) or build your own. No coding required.
Skip: Encode policy logic from scratch. Write custom simulation scripts.
See the results
Distributional charts, executive summaries, targeting analysis. Who wins, who loses, broken down by income, region, household type.
Skip: Build Excel charts manually. Write methodology docs after the fact.
Go deeper
Compare multiple policy variants side by side. Optimize targeting given a budget constraint. Run multi-year projections with vintage tracking.
Skip: Repeat entire analysis for each variant. Coordinate across teams.
What you get
Open Data Pipeline
Connect to European data sources without the pain
Pre-built connectors for INSEE, Eurostat, and EU-SILC. Automatic data harmonization, synthetic population generation from public marginals, and full traceability of every transformation step.
Scenario Templates
Define policies in minutes, not weeks
Carbon tax, energy subsidies, feebates, targeted rebates, social transfers. YAML-based templates with documented parameters. Adjust in the GUI or a text editor.
Dynamic Orchestrator
Multi-year projections with real state tracking
Run 10+ year projections with year-to-year state transitions. Vintage tracking for heating systems, vehicles, buildings. Cumulative indicators across the full projection horizon.
Scenario Comparison
Test policy variants side by side
Side-by-side indicators, diff views, parameter sweeps, and winners-and-losers tables. Define 9 scenario combinations and compare them all at once.
Indicators & Analysis
From raw numbers to decision-ready outputs
Distributional impact, welfare indicators, fiscal analysis, policy performance metrics, and geographic breakdowns. Every indicator traces back to its source assumptions.
Run Manifests
Every run is traceable. Every result is reproducible.
Automatic immutable manifests documenting engine version, data hashes, all parameters, population assumptions. Re-run any analysis on any machine with identical results.
No-Code GUI + Python API
Two modes, one engine
The GUI is the primary interface — select data, configure scenarios, run simulations, compare results, all in the browser. For researchers: full Python API with Jupyter integration, DataFrame access, and reproducible notebook workflows. Both share the same engine.
From months to minutes
Built for the people
closest to policy
Policy analysts in government
You understand the policy deeply. You shouldn't need to become a data engineer to assess it. Open a browser, pick a scenario, get results you can trust.
Researchers and economists
Full Python API and Jupyter integration. Reproducible runs with assumption manifests. Build on OpenFisca without rebuilding the infrastructure.
Evaluation teams
Replace months of coordination, conventions, and budget transfers with self-service analysis. Iterate in real time instead of waiting for external reports.
In practice
Carbon Tax Impact Assessment
A ministry team needs distributional impact of a carbon tax reform with multiple redistribution options — broken down by income decile, household type, and region — ready for a director's briefing.
Same-day analysis. Full methodology manifest generated automatically. Easy to re-run when parameters change.
Energy Renovation Subsidy Evaluation
An evaluation department asks: does an energy renovation subsidy actually reach low-income homeowners with poorly insulated housing? Requires combining income, housing stock, and eligibility data.
Compare intended vs. actual targeting. Adjust eligibility thresholds and see how coverage changes — instantly.
Multi-Year Carbon Tax Phase-In
A researcher models a carbon tax increasing from 44 to 100 EUR/tCO2 over five years. How do distributional effects evolve as households adapt?
Year-by-year projections with vintage tracking. See fleet turnover, building insulation, and cumulative distributional effects.
Academic Publication Workflow
An economist needs reproducible distributional results for a journal submission. Co-author at another institution needs identical results.
Share manifest + notebook. Co-author runs it and gets identical results — verified by comparing manifest hashes.
Nothing like this exists
in Europe
| ReformLab | PolicyEngine | EUROMOD | Ad-hoc scripts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-service for analysts | No-code GUI + Python API | Web calculator | Desktop, training required | Code only |
| Environmental policy | Carbon tax, subsidies, feebates | Tax-benefit only | Tax-benefit only | Custom each time |
| Multi-year projections | Built-in orchestrator with vintage tracking | Static snapshots | Static snapshots | Manual |
| Open data integration | End-to-end pipeline | US/UK focused | EU-SILC locked | Manual |
| Reproducibility | Automatic run manifests | Partial | Manual | Nonexistent |
| Europe / France | Native support | US/UK only | EU-wide, complex setup | Depends |
| Customizable | Bring your own models and data | Fixed models | Fixed models | Fully custom but fragile |
PolicyEngine
Proved the model in the US and UK — web-native, self-service policy analysis. In continental Europe, starting with France, there's nothing equivalent.
EUROMOD
The institutional standard for EU tax-benefit analysis — powerful but desktop-based, tightly coupled to EU-SILC, and not designed for self-service or environmental policy.
OpenFisca
The computation engine we build on — mature, open-source, and well-maintained. But it's an engine, not a product.
Why now
Open data is ready
France and the EU have invested heavily in public data infrastructure. The raw material for policy assessment exists — it just lacks tooling.
AI changed what's possible
The kind of platform that once required a full engineering department can now be built by a domain expert with the right technical skills and AI-assisted development.
Questions
General
What is ReformLab?
An open-source platform for policy impact analysis. It connects European open data to policy simulation models and produces distributional results — who benefits, who loses, how the targeting works — without requiring users to code or build data pipelines from scratch.
Who is it for?
Three primary audiences: policy analysts in government who need to assess impact without building custom pipelines; researchers and economists who need reproducible microsimulation results; and evaluation teams who want to iterate on scenarios without outsourcing every assessment.
What kinds of policies can it model?
Carbon taxes with various redistribution mechanisms, energy renovation subsidies, vehicle and appliance feebates, targeted social transfers, and any policy expressible as a parameter overlay on OpenFisca tax-benefit calculations. The template system is extensible.
Is it free?
Yes. ReformLab is open-source. Free to use, free to modify, free to contribute to.
Data & Privacy
What data does it use?
By default, ReformLab works entirely with publicly available data: INSEE published tables, Eurostat aggregates, EU-SILC public-use files, emission factor databases. No restricted microdata is required for any core workflow.
Can I use my own (restricted) data?
Yes. The platform can ingest custom datasets. When you supply restricted microdata, it stays on your machine — the platform never copies, transmits, or persists your data beyond your local environment.
How are synthetic populations generated?
From published marginal distributions using established statistical methods (iterative proportional fitting, combinatorial optimization). The generation process is fully documented: which source tables, which demographic targets, what tolerances were applied. No hidden defaults.
Technical
What's the relationship with OpenFisca?
OpenFisca is the tax-benefit computation engine that ReformLab builds on. OpenFisca encodes legislation and computes individual/household-level effects. ReformLab provides everything above that: data preparation, scenario management, multi-year orchestration, vintage tracking, indicators, and user interfaces. OpenFisca is the engine; ReformLab is the car.
Do I need to know Python?
No. The no-code GUI lets you select data, configure scenarios, run simulations, and view results entirely in the browser. Python is available for users who want full programmability, but it's not required.
Does it work offline?
Yes. All computation runs locally. No network calls, no cloud dependencies. The platform runs on a standard laptop with 16GB RAM.
How large a population can it handle?
MVP targets up to 500,000 households on a 16GB laptop. Core computations are vectorized (NumPy/Arrow), so 100k+ households complete in seconds.
Reproducibility
What is a run manifest?
An automatically generated record of everything about a simulation run: engine version, dependency versions, input data hashes, all policy parameters, all synthetic population assumptions, timestamp. It's created as a side effect of running any simulation — no manual documentation needed.
Can I reproduce someone else's results?
Yes, if they share their run manifest and scenario configuration. Install ReformLab, load their manifest, run it — you get identical results. Deterministic execution means same inputs always produce same outputs.
Comparison
How is this different from PolicyEngine?
PolicyEngine is a web-native policy calculator focused on the US and UK. ReformLab focuses on continental Europe (starting with France), supports environmental policy templates beyond tax-benefit, includes multi-year dynamic projections with vintage tracking, and provides both a no-code GUI and a full Python API.
Why not just use OpenFisca directly?
You can. OpenFisca is an excellent computation engine. But using it for a complete policy assessment means building your own data pipeline, scenario management, multi-year orchestration, indicators, and methodology documentation. ReformLab is the product layer that does all of this for you.
"The next time someone asks 'who does this policy actually help?' — they'll be able to answer."
Open-source. Open-data-first. France and Europe.
Questions? contact@reform-lab.eu