Essays on the Global Burden of Animal Diseases

Mohammad Maksudur Rahman

doi:10.7273/000005119

This dissertation comprises three studies investigating the global impacts of animal diseases on trade, production, and human and animal health expenditures. In the first essay, we identify and quantify the global impacts of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreaks on meat exports using panel data from 178 World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) member countries from 1996 to 2016. We adopt a causal inference approach that considers animal disease outbreaks over time as non-staggered binary treatments with the potential for switching in (new outbreak) and out of treatment (recovery) within the sample period. Using a recently proposed dynamic DID estimator robust to group and time heterogeneity, we estimate the treatment effects that decompose into ‘post-infection’ and ‘post-recovery’ effects. We find the outbreak decreases meat export by 24% - 36% of mean annual meat export in the five years following an outbreak, which is brought about by a decline in the joiners’ meat exports, while the leavers do not recover the export losses even after five years. The average effect is estimated at about 54,000 tons per outbreak, resulting in an export revenue loss of $143 million. The asymmetric post-infection and post-recovery trade losses imply a significant disease burden on the endemic regions. FMD outbreaks cause animal morbidity and mortality, resulting in production loss and loss of income and livelihood. In the second essay, we estimate the global impacts of FMD outbreaks on production. We adopt a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method to estimate changes in global agricultural and livestock total factor productivity (TFP) for 178 countries during 1996 - 2016. In the first stage, we use DEA to estimate the Malmquist TFP index and the Malmquist-Luenberger TFP index for the agriculture and livestock sectors, respectively. In the second stage, we use a difference-in-differences (DID) estimator to identify the changes in TFP after an outbreak. The causal model shows a delayed impact of disease events on overall agricultural TFP. On average, an outbreak causes a 30% lower productivity growth in the newly disease-affected countries compared to the annual productivity growth of never affected countries. Decomposition into different components reveals that a lower technical efficiency growth in the affected regions contributes to the lower TFP growth. Endemic zoonoses cause a dual burden of increased health costs for humans and animals and reduced income and livelihoods, especially in livestock-dependent rural households. In the third essay, we investigate the factors determining the household’s willingness to pay (WTP) for disease mitigation services for animals and humans. Using a cross-sectional survey of 71 households in northern Tanzania, we conduct choice experiments to elicit disease mitigation preferences for anthrax in animals and humans. We specify a random utility framework and estimate a single-bounded logistic regression model. Results show that the respondents are reluctant to adopt any disease mitigation measure with lower efficacy for anthrax, be it for animals or humans. There is also high price sensitivity across animal and human health expenditure choices. When price level variations are accounted for, the respondents choose lower-cost disease mitigation measures such as animal vaccination and outpatient treatments for humans. High uptake in low-cost alternatives imply potential for the private market-based provision of disease mitigation services, while public support, such as subsidies and price support, may facilitate the success of disease mitigation strategies.

Essays on the Global Burden of Animal Diseases

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