@inproceedings{wickramaratne2026impact,
  title={{Impact of Cyclone Ditwah on the Colombo Stock Exchange: An Event Study on Market Reactions to Natural Disasters}},
  author={Wickramaratne, Anupama and Fernando, Thevindu and Jayawardana, Tharupahan and Wijesinghe, Dehan and Dinapura, Senindu and Mendis, Madara and Jayatilleke, Nevidu and Silva, Nisansa de and Wickramanayake, Sandareka},
  booktitle={2026 Moratuwa Engineering Research Conference (MERCon)}, 
  pages={407-412},
  doi={10.1109/MERCon71835.2026.11691317},  
  year={2026},
  abstract={Natural disasters inflict severe macroeconomic shocks on financial markets, yet frontier exchanges remain understudied. Using a classical event-study framework on 71,044 daily records for 289 CSE-listed stocks (February 2025 - February 2026), this paper examines how the Colombo Stock Exchange absorbed Cyclone Ditwah, which struck Sri Lanka on 28 November 2025, causing USD 4.1 billion in damages (≈4\% of GDP), leading to CSE's worst weekly decline since November 2022. Market-model parameters estimated for 203 qualifying stocks across 19 sectors reveal three key findings: frontier markets do not absorb disaster shocks instantaneously, as losses accumulate over five trading days rather than on the landfall day; foreseeable disasters are partially priced in advance, with statistically significant pre-event losses confirming early investor repricing as meteorological warnings intensified; and aggregate market measures obscure sectoral heterogeneity. While the overall Cumulative Abnormal Return (CAR) of -2.57\% is statistically meaningful, only four sectors (Consumer Services, Insurance, Diversified Financials, and Utilities) show consistent, broad repricing supported by both parametric and non-parametric tests. These findings inform investors' pricing of disaster risk in frontier markets, policymakers designing sector-targeted stabilisation interventions, and researchers studying market efficiency under severe informational uncertainty.},
  misc={https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11691317,ML,https://goo.gl/iY6aTr}
}