USING MICROSIMULATION TO HELP DESIGN PILOT DEMONSTRATIONS - AN ILLUSTRATION FROM THE CANADIAN SELF-SUFFICIENCY PROJECT

This article describes how microsimulation analysis was used to help d esign a social experiment currently being conducted in two provinces i n Canada. To the authors' knowledge, microsimulation has never been us ed before for this purpose, although the technique has been used to as sist development of a couple of nonexperimental demonstration programs . For the Canadian experiment, the microsimulation analysis war used p rimarily for choosing among alternative program models and for refinin g the selected model, but it had other important uses, such as helping to project the potential financial liability to the Canadian governme nt. The authors conclude that microsimulation should be given serious consideration in the design of future experiments, whenever an appropr iate simulation model is available.