Religion and venture investing: A cross‐country analysis

Min Maung, Zhenyang Tang and Xiaowei Xu

The Financial Review, 2020, vol. 55, issue 3, 433-460

Abstract: Using a sample of 56 countries over the 2000–2016 period, we document lower levels of venture capital investments in more religious countries. These results are not specific to any primary religion. Furthermore, we show that the negative relation between religiosity and venture investing mainly stems from risk aversion inherent in religiosity. Our results are unlikely driven by economic clout, as we show more religious countries in fact have higher levels of domestic credit or nonfinancial investments, despite lower levels of venture investments. We also present several findings consistent with risk aversion. Venture investments in more religious countries are more likely to have successful exits and are less likely to be foreign or early‐stage deals. Our results are robust to different measures of venture investments and religiosity, and to alternative specifications that account for endogeneity.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/fire.12233

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:finrev:v:55:y:2020:i:3:p:433-460

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0732-8516

Access Statistics for this article

The Financial Review is currently edited by Cynthia J. Campbell and Arnold R. Cowan

More articles in The Financial Review from Eastern Finance Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().