H1N1 influenza and the Australian macroeconomy

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-ru..