Working Papers

Extending the 2019 WHO EPIC projection model

Jeremy A. Lauer. Working paper · Unexia Association. 21 September 2026.

This study extends the production framework developed for the 2018 WHO Investment Case and a 2019 ten-country analysis to a broader country group. Simulations were completed for 111 countries: 64 from the published resource-needs analysis and 47 additional economies. Across the five-year scenarios, additional GDP was $717.0 billion against $514.4 billion of additional spending. The results indicate positive production effects under the specified assumptions, but do not strongly suggest fiscal self-financing in any arbitrary country or country group. They remain conditional on programme-only costs, transported health responses, assumed disability-to-labour conversion and simplified macroeconomic dynamics.

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An audit of the 2019 WHO EPIC estimates

Jeremy A. Lauer. Companion audit · Unexia Association. 18 September 2026.

In a 2019 analysis, Han, Arcand and Lauer linked projected health improvements to economic output through an augmented Solow model. This response, by a co-author, reassesses that contribution using archived manuscripts, spreadsheets and source exports. Alongside inconsistent capital valuation and questionable balanced-growth calibration, the audit finds that the archived series labelled ‘NCD deaths’ reproduces all-cause deaths rather than NCD-specific deaths across all 120 inspected inputs. Under the preferred reconstruction, the ten countries show US$223 billion of additional GDP during 2019–2023, or 0.19% of cumulative baseline GDP, compared with the reported US$578 billion and 0.54%. The findings warrant qualification of policy-facing claims and demonstrate the importance of provenance, reproducibility, auditability and contestability.

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