Inforum specializes in the construction of economic models and the use of these models for forecasting and policy analysis. Contact us today to see how Inforum’s models can help you.

LIFT

LIFT (Long-term Interindustry Forecasting Tool) is an interindustry-macro (IM) model of the U.S. economy.  The model incorporates data from government statistical agencies, and relationships among the data are employed to simulate and to project economic developments.  It is particularly useful for addressing questions involving interactions between industries and the interplay between industry and macroeconomic relationships.

The LIFT model provides historical data and forecasts for:

• Sectoral detail (121 commodities, 71 industries, 83 consumption categories) – Output, employment, value added, personal consumption, residential and nonresidential investment, government expenditures, exports, imports, and more.
• Macrovariables – GDP, net exports, inflation, population, unemployment rate, household income, and more.

LIFT employs a “bottom-up” approach to macroeconomic modeling.  This structure supports analysis of how changes in one industry, such as increased productivity or changing international trade patterns, affect related sectors and the aggregate quantities.  In this way, the model works like the actual economy, building the macroeconomic totals from details of industry activity.

The model is especially well-suited to the exploration of policy questions or analysis where both industry and macroeconomic behavior are important. The model has been used to explore impacts of tax policies, tariffs and free trade agreements, carbon taxes or cap and trade programs, infrastructure improvements, electrification of the vehicle fleet, port closures and other disruptions, immigration, defense spending cuts, health care finance, deficit reduction, and many other scenarios.

ILIAD

The ILIAD (Interindustry Large-scale Integrated And Dynamic) model serves as a companion to the LIFT model, providing additional detail for 350 sectors of the U.S. economy. It allows for forecasting of components of final demand and value added, as well as prices and employment.

STEMS

The Inforum State Employment Modeling System (STEMS) serves to estimate employment, with industry detail at the state level. The STEMS forecasts rely on employment estimates generated by Inforum’s LIFT model. The STEMS model quickly calculates results for a given simulation, presenting a standard set of tables to display the results of STEMS model simulations.

Notable uses of STEMS in the past include a detailed analysis of employment trends in the State of Maryland, and an analysis of the impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement on the economies of individual states, particularly those which share a border with Mexico.