Are religion and culture relevant for corporate risk-taking? International evidence

• Autor(a) principal: José María Díez-Esteban
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: Jorge Farinha, Conrado Diego García-Gómez
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/10216/119058
• topic: Gestão financeira, Economia e gestão; Financial management, Economics and Business

Using a large sample of firms from 37 countries over the period of 20072015, we empirically analyse the impact of religion and national culture characteristics on the level of corporate risk-taking around the world and the channels through which this can take place. First, we initially observe that different religious backgrounds have different impacts on corporate risk-taking, these being negative for Catholic and Islamic-based countries and positive for firms in Protestant nations. Secondly, we observe that companies in countries with high scores of power distance, masculinity, individualism and long-term orientation tend to increase risk-taking while high levels of uncertainty avoidance moderates corporate risk-taking behavior. We also show results that in companies where institutional investors are the most relevant reference shareholder the influence of religion on corporate risk-taking is not felt, unlike when the main shareholder is an individual or a family. (c) 2018 ACEDE