H1N1 influenza and the Australian macroeconomy

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Verikios, George, McCaw, James M, McVernon, Jodie and Harris, Anthony H (2012) H1N1 influenza and the Australian macroeconomy. Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, 17 (1). pp. 22-51. ISSN 1354-7860 (print) 1469-9648 (online)

Abstract

Early 2009 saw the emergence of an H1N1 influenza epidemic in North America that eventually spread to become the first pandemic of the twenty-first century. Previous work has suggested that pandemics and near-pandemics can have large macroeconomic effects on highly affected regions; here, we estimate what those effects might be for Australia. Our analysis applies the MONASH-Health model: a computable general equilibrium model of the Australian economy. We deviate from previous work by incorporating two important short-run mechanisms in our analytical framework: quarterly periodicity and excess capacity. The analysis supports the assertion that an H1N1 epidemic could have significant short-run macroeconomic effects but the size of these effects is highly dependent on the degree of inertia in the markets for physical capital and labour.

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Item type Article
URI https://vuir.vu.edu.au/id/eprint/24580
DOI 10.1080/13547860.2012.639999
Official URL http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1354786...
Subjects Historical > FOR Classification > 1402 Applied Economics
Historical > FOR Classification > 1605 Policy and Administration
Historical > Faculty/School/Research Centre/Department > College of Business
Keywords computable general equilibrium, excess capacity, H1N1 influenza, pandemics, quarterly models
Citations in Scopus 23 - View on Scopus
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