Travail de recherche/Working paper
| Résumé : | Labor rights violations and environmental challenges have caused companies to comeunder increasing society’s pressure to achieve higher sustainability standards. Using a noveldataset of worldwide industrial disasters and companies allegedly involved in them, I examinewhether large companies suffer systematic stock market losses after disasters. I estimate anaverage drop in price returns of 1.47 percentage points on the day after the disaster and3.21 over one week. Accordingly, volatility soars. I then discuss the possible mechanismsbehind this negative market response. I focus on harm to the reputation for sustainabilityand I examine the media’s attention to environmental and labor topics through a sentimentanalysis of disaster-related news. I find that a more negative tone of the news is associatedwith larger stock market losses. |
