Does religion affect capital structure?

We hypothesize that if the cultural characteristics of a region are important, then firms located in Protestant and Catholic-majority counties within the U.S. will have different attitude towards leverage. We find that a one percent increase in a county’s Protestant religiosity leads to a 0.4% lower leverage and less frequent debt issuances. This religiosity also has significant effect on the firms’ adjustment speeds towards the target capital structure. Using a sample of international firms, we find that these differences in leverage in the U.S. are similar to the behavior of firms in Catholic and Protestant countries outside of the U.S.