Publication

This paper provides an assessment of the global economic impact of SARS as well as a more comprehensive approach to estimating the global consequences of major disease outbreaks. The authors present an alternative approach to estimating the cost of disease, which focuses on the impact of an infectious disease on consumption and investment behavior through changes in the cost and risk of doing business. Through increased economic interdependence, these changes in behavior have wide-ranging general equilibrium consequences for the world economy, leading to economic losses well in excess of the traditional estimates of the cost of disease.