specifications that include an interaction term of whether an individual was also recently exposed to a prior violent event. These specifications, in turn, allow us to estimate the marginal effect of exposure to a violent event conditional on other, recent exposure.

We find that labor allocation decisions of individuals respond to exposure to violence, and these effects seem to operate through a “shadow of violence” mechanism. Our main results show that both men and women exposed to herder-related violence (i.e., an event occurring within 10 km. within the previous month), and that have also been previously exposed to this violence (i.e., a previous event occurring within the previous six months), shift toward informal work in the post-planting season at both the extensive and intensive margins and shift away from informal work in the post-harvest season at the extensive margin. This shift toward informal work in the post-planting season seems to act as a substitute activity for agricultural work for men in households exposed to herder-related violence and that have also been previously exposed to this violence. Agricultural work does not decline for women; instead, the total number of hours worked increases if women live within households exposed to herder-related violence and that have also been previously exposed. For these women, the increase in total hours worked is predominantly allocated to self-employment or household-enterprise work.

To further explore the “shadow of violence” mechanism, we investigate heterogeneity across both time and space by exploiting the spike in violence just before the 2018-2019 GHS survey rounds and within Nigerian states implementing open-grazing bans, which have been attributed as a contributor to increased violence in the conflict. We find that the shift toward informal work and away from agricultural work is larger within ban states and during the 2018-2019 survey round, especially during the post-harvest season. Finally, to investigate possible welfare implications of the measured labor responses after exposure to herder-related violence, we also estimate additional “knock-on” or lagged effects that materialize during the post-harvest period of the 2018-2019 GHS survey and are associated with exposure to herder-related violence in the previous planting season. We find that households exposed to herder-related violence and who have also been previously exposed to this violence (i) shift their consumption toward food and away from other expenditures, (ii) are more likely to sell raw crops to relatives/friends or via the farmgate, and (iii) are more likely to operate a non-farm enterprise.

Our paper is closely related to two sets of existing literature. The first set studies the role of the informal sector as a safety net in response to adverse shocks (Gunther and Launov, 2012; Epstein and Shapiro, 2017; Adhvaryu _et al._ , 2019; Colombo _et al._ , 2019). For example, Adhvaryu _et al._ (2019) study the effect of price shocks in the global coffee market on informal work in Tanzania. The authors document that households cope with declines in the global price for coffee by increasing informal household enterprise ownership. Our paper documents the labor-related effects of a different type of shock, specifically exposure to heightened violence, exposure to which may reasonably be expected to alter individual labor allocation.

The investigation of the specific effects of Nigeria’s farmer-herder conflict links our paper to a second set of literature, which examines exposure to conflict in Nigeria specifically. This violence has been shown to influence agricultural output (Adelaja and George, 2019), food security, (George _et al._ , 2020), and farm 3