QUEST is a macroeconomic model to analyse and understand the state of the EU economy. It is developed by the Directorate‑General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) with support from the JRC. The current version QUEST III is applied since 2007. Download is available below.

QUEST is one of the analytic instruments DG Economic and Financial Affairs uses for monitoring the EU 2020 objectives and the impact of the flagships initiatives, in particular for the integrated surveillance of member countries economic stance, including their fiscal policy, budget imbalances, reform programmes, and overall sustainability of public finances. The QUEST III model has been estimated on euro area and US data, as well as for individual euro area member states, using Bayesian estimation methods

QUEST III belongs to the class of New-Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models that are now widely used by international institutions and central banks. These models have rigorous microeconomic foundations derived from utility and profit optimisation and include frictions in goods, labour and financial markets. With empirically plausible estimation and calibration they are able to fit the main features of the macroeconomic time series. The QUEST III model has been estimated on Euro Area and US data using Bayesian estimation methods.

Since 2015 JRC is also supporting DG COMP in the macroeconomic assessment of competition policy enforcements in the European Union using QUEST model based simulations. The analysis makes use of EU Competition Authority cartel and merger cases and simulates their macroeconomic impact.

For further references on QUEST model, see the Macroeconomic models webpage.

QUEST III supports questions related to policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. Many of the main applications deal with fiscal and monetary policy interactions. In order to deal with the wide range of policy issues in DG ECFIN, different model versions of the QUEST III model have been constructed, each with a specific focus and regional and sectoral disaggregation.