Does branch religiosity influence bank risk taking?

Abstract

Using branch-level data on public and private US banking institutions, we investigate the importance of branch religiosity in shaping bank risk-taking behavior. Our results show robust evidence that branch religiosity is negatively related to bank risk-taking. This effect persists after controlling for several bank-level and county-level variables that might correlate with religiosity. Moreover, this result is robust to controlling for headquarter religiosity, suggesting that the effect of branch religiosity is additive and not washed out by headquarter religiosity. Overall, our findings document that headquarter religiosity does not capture the full effect of religiosity on bank behavior, as claimed by previous research, but that the religiosity of the geographic area in which the bank operates significantly influences bank behavior.