Data and Code for: Insecurity and Firm Displacement: Evidence from Afghan Corporate Phone Records

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Sylvan Herskowitz, World Bank; Joshua E. Blumenstock, University of California-Berkeley; Tarek Ghani, Washington University in St. Louis; Ethan B. Kapstein, Princeton University; Thomas L. Scherer, University of California, San Diego; Ott Toomet, University of Washington

Version: View help for Version V1

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Insecurity and Firm Displacement - Manuscript and Appendices.pdf	application/pdf	1.6 MB	08/30/2024 04:58:PM
READ ME - Data and Analysis Files.pdf	application/pdf	253.8 KB	08/20/2025 01:41:PM

Project Citation:

Herskowitz, Sylvan, Blumenstock, Joshua E., Ghani, Tarek, Kapstein, Ethan B., Scherer, Thomas L., and Toomet, Ott. Data and Code for: Insecurity and Firm Displacement: Evidence from Afghan Corporate Phone Records. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2025. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-10-03. https://doi.org/10.3886/E208787V1

Project Description

Summary:

We provide empirical evidence on how insecurity affects firm behavior by linking data on deadly terrorist attacks in Afghanistan to geolocated data on corporate mobile phone activity. We first develop an approach to estimate the geographic footprint of firms from employee locations. Using these measures, our main analysis finds that violent shocks reduce local firm presence by both increasing firm exit and decreasing entry. Firms react most to violence in their ‘headquarters’ district. We further find suggestive evidence of persistence, stronger impacts in more secure districts, and spillovers, whereby attacks in provincial capitals reduce firm presence in surrounding rural districts.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Call detail records; event study; natural experiment

JEL Classification:
      F50 International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy: General
      L22 Firm Organization and Market Structure
      O12 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

Geographic Coverage: Afghanistan

Time Period(s): 2012 – 2017

Collection Date(s): 2012 – 2017

Universe: Firms measured through use of call detail records.

Data Type(s): administrative records data; event/transaction data; other; survey data

Methodology

Response Rate: The main outcomes are measured in administrative call detail records (CDR) from a telecom service provider in Afghanistan. We use their full set of corporate accounts.

We attempted to interview representatives of this set of firms in our own survey and were able to reach 406 out of 2,292 firms from the CDR data.

Sampling: We tried to reach the full universe of corporate account holders in the CDR data.

Data Source: CDR data was provided by a local telecom provider.

Collection Mode(s): computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI)

Scales: N/A

Weights: None.

Unit(s) of Observation: Firm-month-district

Geographic Unit: district

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Published Versions

V1 [2025-10-03]

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