post-harvest. The trends for the post-planting (rainy season) and post-harvest (dry season) rounds are separated for agricultural, (e.g., farming) activity. While there is no notable trend for the post-harvest/dry season, there is a distinctly upward trend for the post-planting/rainy season. This is consistent with either a larger proportion of workers engaged in agricultural activity or, also, a greater number of engagements later and into the dry season, as cited in several accounts of the herder-farmer conflict. We also observe a notable peak in self-employment between 2016 and 2018, which corresponds to the intensification of herder-involved conflict events documented in Figure 1.

The role of informal work, in relation to economic development in general, and more specifically as a means to a ‘safety net’ in response to adverse shocks remains an open debate among researchers and policymakers. Specifically, while some argue that the informal sector is the result of competitive market forces, others contend that informal work is the result of market segmentation, and more recently, some argue that the informal sector offers either attractive employment opportunities or a coping strategy of last resort (Gunther and Launov, 2012). Although the extent to which informal work acts as a ‘safety net’ is an empirical question, existing work demonstrates the potential of informal work to buffer individuals from the consequences of adverse shocks (Loayza and Rigolini, 2011), such as exposure to conflict.

# **3 Empirical Framework**

This section includes four sub-sections. First, we introduce the two primary sets of data we use to construct an individual-level panel data set of exposure to violent conflict events and labor allocation. Second, we discuss some descriptive statistics which characterize our study sample. Third, we specify our core identification strategy and discuss the interpretation of our preferred estimates. Finally, we discuss the potential consequences of sample attrition and discuss how we address these concerns.

## **3.1 Data**

We combine two detailed panel datasets. The first set of data is from the Nigeria General Household Survey (GHS), which is a product of the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics and the World Bank’s Living Standard Measurement Study (LSMS).<sup>23</sup> The GHS was conducted over four rounds in 2010–2011, 2012–2013, 2015–2016, and 2018–2019, and each survey round includes two data points for each household: one in the post-planting (rainy season) period and one in the post-harvest (dry season) period, regardless of whether the household engages in agricultural activities. Data collection in the post-planting period generally occurs in the later fall months, while fieldwork in the post-harvest season occurs within the first few months of the next year. Figure 2 illustrates the timing of GHS survey rounds and shows how these data collection periods correspond with the trend in herder-related violence in Nigeria.

The GHS is designed to include a nationally (and zonally) representative set of enumeration areas,

> 23These data (and all documentation) were accessed via the World Bank’s microdata catalog. Data were downloaded on November 8, 2019.

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