• Presenters: Huw Lloyd-Ellis, PhD. Professor in the Department of Economics at Queen’s University; Frédéric Tremblay, PhD. NSERC and One Society Network Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Economics at Queen’s University.

• Abstract: This seminar discusses the ongoing need for estimates of the economic costs of pandemics to inform real-time policy choices for Canadian provinces. The complex impacts of COVID-19, and the policy responses to it, present significant challenges to economic modelling. The practical applicability of existing approaches in this context are often limited due to their inflexibility, long-term perspective, lack of regional focus and/or lags in data availability. We provide an overview of a prototype framework, the STUDIO model, designed to address these challenges. We highlight the framework’s key inputs and outputs, as well as its limitations. STUDIO has been applied throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to track its ongoing economic costs and assess the impacts of alternative provincial policy responses to a variety of epidemiological scenarios. We summarize some of the broad implications so far and the potential costs of alternative scenarios going forward. We also identify areas in which the framework could be improved and extended to expand its applicability to future pandemic modelling.

Presentation Link