"Independent Calculation Agent" and Its Modeling for the Pandemic Emergency Facility and the "Ebola Bond"

• In Event: Modeling Health Futures: Practices of Assuming, Anticipating, and Forecasting - III

Abstract

When the next public health emergency of pandemic proportion occurs, chances are good that a bond or two have been created to pay for the response. Data trigger bond payouts. How is this data point derived? How have interested parties come to agree on how this number is modelled? Why is so much trust put in the model when most of the interested parties, when pressed, don’t believe the data points is ‘real.’ This paper delves into how health statistics during a disease pandemic are modelled and deployed in the service of bond activation. It is based on on-going research in Sierra Leone and in capital market centers throughout the world about how data modelers ‘come to the numbers’ that trigger bond activation. Activation means the difference between the release of millions of dollars by the Wold Bank for emergency pandemic response OR investors making millions of dollars in interest on their bonds.

Author

• S.L. Erikson