Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/267346 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 10114
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
Religious adherence has been hard to study in part because it is hard to measure. We develop a new measure of religious adherence, which is granular in both time and space, using anonymized mobile phone transaction records. After validating the measure with traditional data, we show how it can shed light on the nature of religious adherence in Islamic societies. Exploiting random variation in climate, we find that as economic conditions in Afghanistan worsen, people become more religiously observant. The effects are most pronounced in areas where droughts have the biggest economic consequences, such as croplands without access to irrigation.
Subjects: 
religion
mobile phones
big data
climate
economic shocks
JEL: 
Z10
Z12
Q10
Q15
Q54
O13
Document Type: 
Working Paper
Appears in Collections:

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.