Abstract for: Dynamic Planning Model for Donetsk and Luhansk

Since the foreign military intervention in 2014, the Donestsk and Luhansk region in southeastern Ukraine has been divided between a government-controlled area and a rebel-controlled area. The continued fighting is now the longest European military conflict since the Second World War, with a death toll amounting to 13,000 and internally displaced persons numbering 1.5 million. Our modeling project is focused on the economic recovery and development of the government-controlled area. Working with Ukrainian government officials and external advisers to the government, we have a developed an explanatory model that represents the structure of the regional economy that emerged from the crisis period of 2014-2015. The model replicates the economic collapse and the stagnant recovery and it simulates a ‘base case’ scenario—how the regional economy is expected to perform during this decade in the absence of effective new policies. We are now entering the policy design and testing phase of our work. At the conference, we will have an update of policy initiatives implemented in the model and identify obstacles to implementation in the real world.