year shares. The population is also linked to the household population based on the base year shares. Lastly, following the demographic dividend literature, saving rates are linked to the young and old dependency ratios as it is now possible to calculate those from the model output.

We follow Djiofack et al. (2020) to simulate the possible effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Chad’s economy to analyze economic impacts considering gender dimensions. In this approach, the main impact of a pandemic is assumed to be the behavioral changes caused by the fear of exposure to disease and restrictions imposed by the government to mitigate the disease’s spread. The direct effects of an infection (e.g., death toll, suffering due to sick days, etc.) are inarguably important but are unlikely to have significant macroeconomic implications (World Bank, 2020).

Like Djiofack et al. (2020), we assume that avoidance of market interaction during the pandemic would affect the economy through the following domestic channels:

- _Decreasing labor supply:_ People who can afford it avoid the labor markets by not working or working less.

- _Decreasing labor productivity:_ The limitations on mobility and access to labor and other markets would inevitably cause a reduction in labor productivity. Also, the pandemic would affect health care services which might result in diagnosis and treatment of other diseases and increase sick days further.

- _The decline in capital productivity:_ As labor productivity declines, capital productivity would also fall due to increased idle time for machinery and other fixed capital assets. Further, the uncertainty and disruptions due to the pandemic would cause a reduction in the maintenance of such capital, which would eventually be reflected in capital productivity.

- _The slowdown in transport and tourism sectors:_ The measures taken by the government to slow down the spread of disease (e.g., lockdown in urban areas) would cause a significant loss in economic activity in some sectors such as tourism, restaurants, and transport sectors.

We also introduced to the simulations some global effects of the pandemic:

- _Increase in trade and transport margins:_ The measures taken by governments and firms to prevent the spread of the disease, such as stricter phytosanitary regulations or hygiene standards, would increase transaction costs and would be reflected in higher trade and transport margins in imports and exports.

- _Decreased flow of foreign exchange(F/X):_ Uncertainty due to the pandemic would cause investors to postpone or cancel their investment, causing a reduction in F/X flows to the country. Further, most foreign direct investment projects rely on the expertise of foreigners who would not travel to the country due to the pandemic, which would disrupt such projects.

- _Plummeting commodity prices_ : The price of oil and minerals has plummeted during the pandemic due to weakening demand and supply chain problems. This might have important implications for the balance of payments of countries that rely on those commodities for government revenue and F/X flows.

Following World Bank (2019) and Djiofack et al. (2020), we use the change in the above variables during the 2014-2016 Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone (worst affected country) with the average change for these variables over 2005-2014 as a proxy for the macroeconomic impact of COVID-19. We control for the effects of commodity price crises during the same period by comparing the changes in the rest of the West 4