Bug fixes: dataset uprating and salary sacrifice default behavior

[nwoodruff-co]

Description

Two bug fixes are needed:

1. Economic assumptions dataset uprating bug

In policyengine_uk/data/economic_assumptions.py, regional rent uprating was failing because region values weren't being converted to strings before indexing into the private rental prices parameter.

Impact: Dataset uprating for rent values was breaking for years 2022-2024 when regions weren't properly cast to strings.

Fix: Convert region.values to region.values.astype(str) before indexing.

2. Salary sacrifice default behavior

The employee_salary_sacrifice_reduction_rate parameter had a default value of 1.0 (full optimization), but the default behavior should be static (no behavioral response) with a value of 0.

Impact: Simulations were assuming employees would fully optimize their salary sacrifice in response to caps, when the default should be no behavioral response.

Fix: Change default value from 1.0 to 0 to make behavior static by default.

Files Changed

• policyengine_uk/data/economic_assumptions.py
• policyengine_uk/parameters/gov/contrib/behavioral_responses/employee_salary_sacrifice_reduction_rate.yaml