Non sequitur - the rhetorical fallback when the data does not support the ideological argument

An ideological red flag, possibly signaling weak methodology.  From Market Response to Racial Uprisings by Bocar A. Ba, Roman Rivera & Alexander Whitefield.  From the Abstract:

Do investors anticipate that demands for racial equity will impact companies? We explore this question in the context of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement—the largest racially motivated protest movement in U.S. history—and its effect on the U.S. policing industry using a novel dataset on publicly traded firms contracting with the police. It is unclear whether the BLM uprisings were likely to increase or decrease market valuations of firms contracting heavily with police because of the increased interest in reforming the police, fears over rising crime, and pushes to “defund the police”. We find, in contrast to the predictions of economics experts we surveyed, that in the three weeks following incidents triggering BLM uprisings, policing firms experienced a stock price increase of seven percentage points relative to the stock prices of nonpolicing firms in similar industries. In particular, firms producing surveillance technology and police accountability tools experienced higher returns following BLM activism–related events. Furthermore, policing firms’ fundamentals, such as sales, improved after the murder of George Floyd, suggesting that policing firms’ future performances bore out investors' positive expectations following incidents triggering BLM uprisings. Our research shows how—despite BLM’s calls to reduce investment in policing and explore alternative public safety approaches—the financial market has translated high-profile violence against Black civilians and calls for systemic change into shareholder gains and additional revenues for police suppliers.

The red flag is:

. . . the financial market has translated high-profile violence against Black civilians and calls for systemic change into shareholder gains and additional revenues for police suppliers

But the BLM riots were violence by BLM supporters not violence by police against Black civilians.  

The proposed question:

Do investors anticipate that demands for racial equity will impact companies? 

Is an interesting one but that is not the question they actually research.  The question they are actually answering is:

Do urban riots increase the valuation of companies who are primarily suppliers to police departments?

A different way of putting that might be:

Do riots fuel demand for police services and does that increase demand for police services also fuel demand for the goods and services of companies supplying police departments?

If that is the question (and it is certainly the question they end up answering) then the answer by common sense, experience and classic economics is necessarily Yes.  If you increase demand for something (demand for civic stability through more and better policing) and the supply is relatively inelastic, then the cost and valuation of suppliers will rise.  All the researchers have demonstrated is that Supply and Demand are alive and well.

It is hard to imagine who the "economics experts" were that the researchers interviewed who apparently believed that mass civil disturbance would reduce demand for police services and therefor would reduce the demand, and therefore valuation, of companies supplying police departments.  

Quite possibly there is a lag in some jurisdictions between mass civil violence and demand for policing, but overall, one can, and should, easily anticipate overall demand for police services will rise and therefore an increase in valuation for companies supplying police departments with materials and services will occur.

The increase in crime and departure of populations from urban jurisdictions who most enthusiastically embraced defunding police and the flight to safer, better policed suburbs, exurbs, and towns suggests that civic violence will increase demand for increased policing, even if that demand shifts to other jurisdictions.  

And the ideological conclusion that "the financial market has translated high-profile violence against Black civilians and calls for systemic change into shareholder gains and additional revenues for police suppliers" is a complete non sequitur.  That was a conclusion in pursuit of supporting evidence.  A conclusion unsupported by the evidence.