TY - JOUR
T1 - Religious beliefs and local government financing, investment, and cash holding decisions
AU - Chen, Yangyang
AU - Murgulov, Zoltan
AU - Rhee, S. Ghon
AU - Veeraraghavan, Madhu
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2016/9/1
Y1 - 2016/9/1
N2 - This paper is the first to examine the association between religious beliefs and the local government financing, investment and cash holding decisions. Using a sample of 15,204 county-year observations for census years between 1992 and 2012, we show that the degree of religiosity is negatively associated with the level of local government debt and investments while it is positively associated with accumulated cash holdings. Our results indicate that local governments in counties with a higher degree of religiosity are more conservatively managed. To validate the main findings we conduct a range of robustness tests and demonstrate that our main results hold.
AB - This paper is the first to examine the association between religious beliefs and the local government financing, investment and cash holding decisions. Using a sample of 15,204 county-year observations for census years between 1992 and 2012, we show that the degree of religiosity is negatively associated with the level of local government debt and investments while it is positively associated with accumulated cash holdings. Our results indicate that local governments in counties with a higher degree of religiosity are more conservatively managed. To validate the main findings we conduct a range of robustness tests and demonstrate that our main results hold.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84978915891
UR - https://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84978915891&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jempfin.2016.07.009
DO - 10.1016/j.jempfin.2016.07.009
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84978915891
SN - 0927-5398
VL - 38
SP - 258
EP - 271
JO - Journal of Empirical Finance
JF - Journal of Empirical Finance
ER -