The Economic Impact of Massive Infectious and Contagious Diseases: The Case of Wuhan Coronavirus
18 Pages Posted: 3 Mar 2020
Date Written: January 29, 2020
Abstract
We evaluate the economic impact of the Wuhan coronavirus, a massive infectious and contagious disease, on China’s economic performance. To do so, we develop a new model, namely the Integral Massive Infections and Contagious Diseases Economic Simulator (IMICDE-Simulator) and apply it to the coronavirus outbreak. Our analysis based on the simulator indicates that the final impact will be substantial. The results indicate that the growth of the Chinese economy will decline from 6.2% in 2019 to 4.3% in 2020. Hence, the Chinese economy can lose easily a margin between 1.9% to 2% of its growth. The negative effect is significantly larger than that of SARS, and thus also likely to have larger spill-overs on other economies.
Keywords: Economic Simulation, Contagious diseases, China, Wuhan, Policy Modeling
JEL Classification: I15, I18
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