The causal effect of religious piety on shareholder wealth: evidence from acquirer returns and historical religious identification

© 2016 Taylor & Francis. Prior research shows that religion promotes honesty. Honesty in turn motivates managers to view an expropriation from shareholders as self-serving, opportunistic and unethical, thereby alleviating the agency conflict. Religious piety is thus expected to discourage agen...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Pandej Chintrakarn, Pornsit Jiraporn, Young S. Kim, Shenghui Tong
Other Authors: Mahidol University
Format: Article
Published: 2018
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Online Access:https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/123456789/43625
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Institution: Mahidol University
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Summary:© 2016 Taylor & Francis. Prior research shows that religion promotes honesty. Honesty in turn motivates managers to view an expropriation from shareholders as self-serving, opportunistic and unethical, thereby alleviating the agency conflict. Religious piety is thus expected to discourage agency-driven acquisitions that reduce shareholder wealth. We exploit the variation in religious piety across US counties (and states) and show that firms located in a more religious environment are indeed less likely to make poor acquisitions, measured by the stock market reactions to the acquisition announcement. To draw a causal inference, we use historical religious piety as far back as 1952 as our instrument. The two-stage least squares (2SLS) analysis confirms that religious piety induces firms to make better acquisitions. Our analysis based on propensity score matching also corroborates the conclusion.