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Abstract
The economic consequences of livestock epidemics have been long studied for purposes of
estimating the costs of the veterinary measures. In this paper, we show that this catastrophic
risk may have wide market consequences, and that the risk management systems are quite
limited to compensate long term impacts in the European context of growing trade. Through a
detailed literature review we present the main developments of the economic literature aiming
to highlight the economic consequences of animal epidemics such as Foot and Mouth
Disease. We acknowledge that a very few studies have focused on the economic dynamics
and on the long run effects occurring after an epidemic disease outbreak. We discuss the
appropriateness of a dynamic approach to reveal that the de-structuring of the livestock
markets affects the production dynamics as well as the whole agricultural sphere, whose
financial implications remain poorly studied. In addition, we highlight the importance of
taking into account these phenomena for the development of risk management systems, and
we emphasize the growing interest of a dynamic Computable General Equilibrium approach.