Estimating the Economic Impact of the Ebola Epidemic: Evidence from Computable General Equilibrium Models

Beyond the terrible toll in human lives and suffering, the Ebola epidemic which affected West Africa continues to have a measurable economic impact on several of the most economically fragile countries in the region. This paper uses two computable general equilibrium models to estimate the impact on West Africa as a whole, as well as specific impacts for the directly affected countries. Two alternative scenarios are used: a “moderate Ebola” scenario corresponding to the actual containment within the three most severely affected countries, and a “High Ebola” scenario corresponding to the damage that a slower containment in the core three countries and broader regional contagion might have brought. The paper discusses the implications for the macroeconomic resilience of the region, the distributional impacts of the epidemic within the most affected countries and the likely effect of the disease outbreak on the already hard task of fighting poverty in this region.