Jason Debacker
Professor Of Economics at PSL Foundation
South Carolina, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJason Debacker is a Professor of Economics and former Treasury financial economist with 11+ years of experience applying econometric modeling and large-scale data analysis to tax policy, corporate finance, and macroeconomic forecasting. He blends academic research and teaching with applied policy work—co-founding an open-source policy consultancy and leading a nonprofit to promote transparency and reproducibility in public policy analysis. Jason contributes to influential open-source tax models (notably enhancing the PSLmodels Tax-Calculator to simulate Universal Basic Income within benefit and tax calculations), giving him rare hands-on experience translating complex models into auditable policy tools. Based in South Carolina, he pairs a PhD from UT Austin with practical forecasting work for the President’s Budget and quantitative modeling for institutional investors, a mix that spans theory, implementation, and real-world decision support.
12 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
PhD Economics, PhD Economics at The University of Texas at AustinBBA Management Informatino Systems, BBA Management Informatino Systems at University of Georgia - Terry College of Business
Github Skills (4)
pandas10
python10
tax10
numpy9
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
PSLmodels/Tax-Calculator
Jun 2020 - Jan 2023
USA Federal Individual Income and Payroll Tax Microsimulation Model
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:36 releases, 78 reviews, 230 commits in 2 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Jason focused on enhancing the tax-calculator model by implementing Universal Basic Income (UBI) calculations and integrating them into the existing benefit programs. They modified core calculation functions, including `taxcalc/calcfunctions.py`, to incorporate UBI within the benefit and income totals. The user also updated diagnostic tables to include UBI and benefit values and added unit tests to verify the correctness of the calculations. These modifications aimed to enhance the model's capability to simulate different tax scenarios.
individualpayrollpythonlawpsl-cataloged
PSLmodels/examples
Feb 2021 - Mar 2021
Data structures for executing examples with models in the Policy Simulation Library.
Contributions:27 commits, 13 PRs, 8 pushes in 1 month
data-structuredata-structuressimulationpsl-incubating
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