We examine the stock market reaction to natural and man-made disasters in potash mines. We use a sample of 44 mining accidents worldwide over the period 1995-2016. A quarter of the accidents were the result of a natural disaster, such as flooding, that often ended in the closure of the potash mine. The remaining accidents were caused mainly by human error, and almost 50% were work accidents often associated with serious injury or death. On average, mining firms experience a drop in their market value of 0.89% on the day of a disaster. However, we observe a significantly stronger response of the stock market to natural events. Indeed, the regression analysis confirms that the firm's market loss is significantly related to the seriousness of the accident. On the other hand, we do not find any other micro-or macro-level factors that determine the stock market reaction following a disaster.

We examine the stock market reaction to natural and man-made disasters in potash mines. We use a sample of 44 mining accidents worldwide over the period 1995-2016. A quarter of the accidents were the result of a natural disaster, such as flooding, that often ended in the closure of the potash mine. The remaining accidents were caused mainly by human error, and almost 50% were work accidents often associated with serious injury or death. On average, mining firms experience a drop in their market value of 0.89% on the day of a disaster. However, we observe a significantly stronger response of the stock market to natural events. Indeed, the regression analysis confirms that the firm's market loss is significantly related to the seriousness of the accident. On the other hand, we do not find any other micro-or macro-level factors that determine the stock market reaction following a disaster.

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What drives the resilience of markets to disasters? We study syndicates, a form of legal cartel that assigns market share based on production capacity. This creates incentives for excess capacity investment, and may insulate the market from the impact of extreme events. The potash industry, controlled by a syndicate and subject to mine disasters generating exogenous capacity shocks, provides an ideal setting for testing the hypothesis. We find evidence suggesting that even large capacity losses—averaging 3% of global capacity—do not cause production shortfalls or a price response. Such resilience is not observed in more competitive commodity markets.

We study the impact of journal ranking systems on publication outlet choice. We investigate the publication behavior of UK-based scholars registered on IDEAS/RePEc and analyze the publication outcomes of their academic work uploaded to the repository. Our estimates suggest that authors strategically choose outlets to maximize their publication scores. Our identification strategy is based on exploiting the change in the British ABS journal ranking in 2015. Working papers written before the 2015 ABS journal ranking change are significantly less likely to be published in ex-post downgraded journals. The effect cannot be attributed to the overall change in journal quality.