Conflict, Economic Activities and the Internet: Disentangling the (World Wide) Web

Kaustabh Adhya

Studies in Economics from School of Economics, University of Kent

Abstract: Information shapes people’s narratives and, thus, collective action. The latter bears implications for both inter-group economic cooperation and conflict. In this paper, we examine the economic effects of ethnic conflicts under varying information levels as proxied by mobile Internet speeds. Our analysis of India from 2019 to 2023 yields that religious riots reduce night-time lights by 19.61% in the following year and mobile Internet speed amplifies the negative effects by approximately 1.2 - 5.1 percentage points. We posit that the mechanism is through spiteful narratives that are amplified by the faster Internet. The findings are robust to a battery of alternative specifications and tests.

Keywords: Riots; Internet Speed; Hateful Narratives; Economic Activities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.kent.ac.uk/economics/repec/2601.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ukc:ukcedp:2601

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Studies in Economics from School of Economics, University of Kent School of Economics, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7FS.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr Anirban Mitra ().