Religion; Buddhism; Taoism; Owner-manager agency costs; Expense ratio; Asset utilization ratio; External monitoring mechanisms; Business ethics; China
摘要
In China, Buddhism and Taoism are two major religions. Using a sample of 10,363 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market for the period of 2001-2010, I provide strong and robust evidence that religion (i.e., Buddhism and Taoism on the whole) is significantly negatively associated with owner-manager agency costs. In particular, using firm-level religion data measured by the number of religious sites within a radius of certain distance around a listed firm's registered address, I find that religion is significantly negatively (positively) associated with expense ratio (asset utilization ratio), the positive (reverse) proxy for owner-manager agency costs. This finding is consistent with the following view: religiosity has remarkable effects on the way how an individual thinks and behaves, and thereof can curb managers from unethical business practices. Moreover, my findings suggest that the negative association between religion and ownermanager agency costs is attenuated for firms with strong external monitoring mechanisms such as higher Marketization and high-quality auditors. Furthermore, after separating Buddhism from Taoism, my finding indicates that above conclusions are only available for Buddhism, suggesting that different religions may have asymmetric influence on owner-manager agency costs. Above results are robust to various measures of religiosity and a variety of robustness checks.
目次
Abstract 319 Keywords 319 Introduction 319 Institutional Background, Literature Review, and Hyotheses Development 321 Religion in Contemporary China 321 Literature Review 322 Hypotheses Development 323 Empirical Models and Variables 324 Empirical Models Specification 324 The Measure of Religious Variables 325 Sample and Descriptive Statistics 327 Sample and Data Sources 327 Descriptive Statistics and Person Correlation Analysis 327 Empirical Results 330 Multivariate Test of Hypothesis 1 330 Multivariate Test of Hypothesis 2 333 Further Tests of Hypotheses 1 and 2 with Distinction Between Buddhism and Taoism 336 Robustness Checks 342 Robustness Checks Using Province-Level Religious Variables 342 Discussion on Potential Endogeneity Between Religion and Owner-Manager Agency Costs 342 Other Robustness Checks 343 Summary and Conclusions 344 References 345
