Inforum, or the Interindustry Forecasting Project at the University of Maryland, was founded 45 years ago by Dr. Clopper Almon, now Professor Emeritus of the University. It is dedicated to improving business planning, government policy analysis, and the general understanding of the economic environment. Inforum accomplishes this mission through:

• Building and using structural economic models of U.S. and other economies. Inforum pioneered the construction of dynamic, interindustry, macroeconomic models which portray the economy in a unique "bottom-up" fashion.

• Working with government and private sector research sponsors to investigate a variety of issues. Economic projections and analysis using Inforum econometric models are distinguished by detail at the industrial and product level.

• Serving as a training crucible for University of Maryland graduate and undergraduate students who receive valuable training in empirical economics. Indeed, Inforum graduate research assistants have completed over 40 Ph.D. dissertations, most of which have contributed directly to the infrastructure of Inforum.

• Maintaining active and productive ties with a world-wide network of research associates, each of which uses Inforum modeling methods and software. The Inforum partners have held annual conferences since 1993 to foster cooperation and development of economic knowledge and techniques.

Since its founding in 1967 by Dr. Clopper Almon, Inforum has served government agencies and private sector entities interested in economic analysis facilitated by Inforum's approach. In particular, Interindustry-Macroeconomic (IM) models combine input-output structure with econometric equations in a dynamic and detailed framework. Because of their ability to portray the detailed structure of economies over actual time periods, these models fill an important gap in the inventory of existing models of the U.S. and foreign economies. In addition to forecasting, the models are often used to answer "what if" questions on the impact across industries of fluctuation in the macroeconomic environment, such as changes in exchange rate or tax policy.