The effects of inflation and unemployment on religious expenditure

Religious expenditure as a favorable and moral economic behavior, in addition to providing the collective interests and the individual interests in economic behavior of Muslims, causes psychological growth and even economic growth of communities. Therefore, the study of the inflation and unemployment effects on this kind of God-seeking spending is one of the needs of economic policymakers in the Islamic society to expand and strengthen actions to enhance the welfare of society.
In this study, data of 28 provinces of Iran during 1997- 2014 is used to study the effects of inflation and unemployment on religious expenditure. For this purpose, the data were extracted from information published by the Statistical Center of Iran.
The estimation results based on the dynamic panel data approach shows that inflation and unemployment effects on religious expenditure in the period under review is negative and significant.
It is recommended that economic policymakers codify effective regulatory rules and policies to reduce inflation and unemployment to provide the perfect backdrop for religious expenditure and God-seeking behavior. So the methods and tools of economic science, especially in the field of Islamic economics, should be used for improving the Islamic indicators of the economy and ignoring the effects of economic variables on moral values must be avoided.