The Department of Economics launched the Economic Policy Modelling Unit on the 25th of June 2007.  It was followed by a four-day in-service training in policy modeling for trainees mainly from the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Ghana, and the National Development Planning Commission.

The birth of the Unit is the outcome of a collaboration between the Department of Economics at the University of Cape Coast and the Centre for Economic Policy of the University of Hull which has a lot of expertise in policy modeling.  These two institutions have identified highly trained local human capacity as a crucial resource in providing relevant policy alternatives because of better appreciation of the local context. 

The decision to establish the Economic Policy Modeling Unit, which is expected to grow into a Centre (EPMC), within the Department of Economics at the UCC was given a boost  upon receipt of a British Academy grant to fund research collaboration between the Centre for Economic Policy at Hull University and economists at University of Cape Coast titled “Macroeconomic Evaluation and Sustainable Development”. That project among other things  led to a highly successful one day meeting at University of Cape Coast with the theme “Macroeconomic Evaluation and Sustainable Development: Some Useful Policy Models for Ghana” in April 2005. Participants at that meeting included not only economists from Hull University and Economics Department of the University of Cape Coast but also representatives from the National Development Planning Commission, the Bank of Ghana, the Ministry of Finance, and the Statistical Service.  The major outcomes of the meeting and of the project more generally included commitments to ongoing collaborations in research and training of PhD students with a view to building up research capacity in the area of policy modeling in the Department of Economics and the Centre for Development Studies at Cape Coast. Most importantly, there was a commitment by all those present to work collaboratively to set up and foster the development and success of the EPMC at University of Cape Coast in collaboration with the Centre for Economic Policy at Hull University.