Market Structure and Resilience: Evidence from Potash Mine Disasters
研究了合法卡特尔（辛迪加）如何通过产能过剩投资使市场在矿难等极端事件中保持韧性，发现钾盐行业即使损失全球3%的产能也未导致产量下降或价格波动，而竞争性市场则不具备这种韧性。
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.