Lost in the Storm: The Academic Collaborations That Went Missing in Hurricane ISSAC
利用2012年美国政治学会年会因飓风取消的自然实验，发现会议取消使参会者合作发表论文的可能性降低16%，且会议促进新团队和异地团队的合作。
By exploiting the cancellation of the 2012 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, we investigate the role of conferences in facilitating academic collaboration. We assembled datasets comprising 17,467 academics, and in difference-in-differences analysis we find that the conference cancellation led to a decrease in individuals' likelihood of co-authoring an article with another attendant by sixteen percent. Moreover, collaborations formed among attendants of (occurring) conferences are associated with more successful co-publications: an effect which is sharpest for teams that are new or non-collocated. Conferences seem to de-cluster the co-authorship network. Altogether, our findings demonstrate the importance of conferences in scientific production.