| With dozens of armed conflicts and billions of dollars in losses, war is a concern of the utmost importance for operations management. My dissertation has three chapters and studies the effect of war on the operational performance of humanitarian and commercial organizations. In the first chapter, I study how war influences the operational performance of humanitarian organizations by estimating how war affects rural public hospitals' total factor productivity, efficiency, and efficiency variability. Using panel data from 163 Colombian hospitals, I find that war has a positive effect on hospitals' total factor productivity, while it has a negative impact on hospital efficiency. Further, efficiency and total factor productivity increase in post-conflict times. In the second chapter, I investigate the effect of war on firms' inventory by gleaning data from 1,122 municipalities, 1,258 attacks, and 38,916 firms in Colombia. To obtain causal estimates, I study the 2012 peace process between the Colombian government and one of the two Colombian guerrilla groups. I find that firms hold less inventory in times of war: Firms decrease their inventory-to-assets ratio up to 3.65 percent points. Firms' proximity to battle zones intensifies this effect, whereas distance to trade centers moderates this effect. In the third chapter, I study the causal effect of social investments (in conflict zones) on firms' operational performance. I explore the impact of a law that obliged some firms in the Colombian oil industry to invest 1% of their budget in social investments. I find these investments lead, from every dollar in sales, to an increase of 23 cents in the firms' operating margin. Also, I study five firms in the Colombian oil industry and find their social investments decrease the frequency of war-related disruptions, which increases revenue and reduces costs. |
