We examine the impact of religiosity on earnings quality, utilising a global sample of 1283 listed banks headquartered in 39 countries and covering the period 2002–2018. Using instrumental variables two-stage least squares regressions, we demonstrate that religiosity has a significant positive impact on banks’ earnings quality. We further show that the impact of religiosity becomes more pronounced among banks headquartered in countries where religion is an important element of national identity and in countries with weak legal protection. We show that the effects of religiosity are more intense during the global financial crisis period. Overall, these findings support the notion that high religiosity tends to reduce unethical activities by managers and can function as an alternative control mechanism for minimising agency costs. Our empirical investigation is robust to alternative model and sample specifications.

我们利用 2002 年至 2018 年期间总部位于 39 个国家的 1283 家上市银行的全球样本，研究了宗教信仰对盈利质量的影响。使用工具变量两阶段最小二乘回归，我们证明宗教信仰对银行的盈利质量有显着的积极影响。我们进一步表明，宗教信仰的影响在总部设在宗教是国民身份重要因素的国家和法律保护薄弱的国家的银行中变得更加明显。我们表明，在全球金融危机期间，宗教信仰的影响更为强烈。总的来说，这些发现支持这样一种观点，即高度的宗教信仰往往会减少管理者的不道德活动，并且可以作为最小化代理成本的替代控制机制。