  This paper extends and adapts an existing abstract model into an empirical
metropolitan region in Brazil. The model - named SEAL: a Spatial Economic
Agent-based Lab - comprehends a framework to enable public policy ex-ante
analysis. The aim of the model is to use official data and municipalities
spatial boundaries to allow for policy experimentation. The current version
considers three markets: housing, labor and goods. Families' members age,
consume, join the labor market and trade houses. A single consumption tax is
collected by municipalities that invest back into quality of life improvements.
We test whether a single metropolitan government - which is an aggregation of
municipalities - would be in the best interest of its citizens. Preliminary
results for 20 simulation runs indicate that it may be the case. Future
developments include improving performance to enable running of higher
percentage of the population and a number of runs that make the model more
robust.
