This looks interesting:
Because religious piety induces individuals to be more honest and risk-averse, it makes managers less likely to exploit shareholders, thereby mitigating the agency conflict and potentially influencing governance arrangements. We exploit the variation in religious piety across U.S. counties and investigate the effect of religious piety on anti-takeover provisions. Our results show that religious piety substitutes for corporate governance in alleviating the agency conflict. Effective governance is less necessary for firm with strong religious piety. As a result, religious piety leads to weaker governance, as indicated by more anti-takeover defenses. We exploit historical religious piety as far back as 1952 as our instrumental variable. Religious piety from the distant past is unlikely correlated with current corporate governance directly, except through contemporaneous religious piety. Further analysis shows that religious piety is not merely associated with, but rather brings about, more anti-takeover provisions.
Chintrakarn, Pandej and Jiraporn, Pornsit and Tong, Shenghui and Kitsabunnarat-Chatjuthamard, Pattanaporn, Exploring the Causal Effect of Religious Piety on Corporate Governance: Evidence from Anti-Takeover Defenses and Historical Religious Identification (April 21, 2015). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2597338
Because anti-takeover defenses are generally regarded as adverse to shareholders, many might question their logic, but the paper offers a slightly more detailed explanation of their hypothesis:
... religious piety induces managers to be more honest and less likely to expropriate from shareholders. As a result, managers are less inclined to exploit shareholders for private benefits. In such firms, strong governance is less necessary because managers are already honest and well-behaved. In other words, religious piety substitutes for strong governance. In addition, anti-takeover devices are less likely to be abused by religious managers. Therefore, they are less harmful in religious firms and are more likely to be adopted. This hypothesis predicts that religious piety is associated with more anti-takeover devices. We label this view “the substitution hypothesis”.
I'm not convinced by the abbreviated analysis in the paper. but it looks like a good project for a number cruncher.