Responsiveness and Firm-Led Disease Prevention: Three Cases from the 2014 Ebola Epidemic in Liberia

Abstract

During the recent Ebola epidemic, large agricultural and industrial firms in Liberia helped to lower the prevalence rate of Ebola, despite the lack of functioning governmental public health services. Firestone, Sime Darby, and ArcelorMittal are three instances of firm-led Ebola prevention whereby the private goals of owners, managers, and workers aligned with the social goal of Ebola prevention. The phenomenon of firm-led Ebola prevention, however, is contrary to standard public health approaches to Ebola and underexplored in the economics of epidemiology. This paper develops three conditions under which firms respond to epidemiological disasters, provide prevention, and lower prevalence rates. First, firms have well-defined and enforceable property rights. Second, labor is relatively scarce. Third, there are few public health alternatives. The aforementioned firms each held well-defined property rights and few public health alternatives, while Firestone faced a relatively abundant supply of labor. These conditions and experiences from Liberia suggest private actors can be a significant source of preventing in epidemiological disasters and the welfare consequences of epidemics may be overstated.