Purpose

Prior research shows that religiosity affects the degree of managers' risk aversion. As a result, religious firms are less likely to invest in R&D activities. Moreover, US GAAP treats these investments as expenses. For this reason, religious firms have fewer expenses in their earnings and are less likely to be in financial distress.

Design/methodology/approach

Data are collected from Worldscope and the Churches and Church Membership files of the American Religion Data Archive website from 1985 to 2018. With 18,199 observations in US context, the authors used the marginal effect to test the mediating effect of R&D accounting treatment.

Findings

The authors find that the marginal effect of religiosity on financial distress with US GAAP is higher than the marginal effect of religiosity on financial distress with capitalization of R&D costs, which means that accounting treatment can explain the relation between religiosity and financial distress in the US context.

Research limitations/implications

The authors used linear interpolation and linear extrapolation data to be able to conduct this research over a period of 1985–2018. For future researches, the authors propose to test other factors which can explain the relationship between religiosity and financial distress based on the ethics element.

Practical implications

These results should be of interest to regulators because treating R&D activities as expenses can destroy the accounting performance of firms that prefer investing in risky projects. This favoritism prevents the comparison between two firms in the same industry with different risk-taking behaviors. This problem is more prevalent if the authors have two firms with different ratios of religiosity. This paper suffers from a major limitation related to data availability.

Originality/value

This may be the first study that investigates why religious firms are less likely to be in financial distress. This paper notes that religious firms are less likely to be in financial distress because their conservative behavior towards R&D activities coincides with the conservative R&D accounting treatment. In fact, the mismatch between expenses and revenues from R&D activities can cause financial distress.

中文翻译：

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美国背景下的宗教信仰、财务困境和研发会计处理

目的

先前的研究表明，宗教信仰会影响管理者的风险厌恶程度。因此，宗教企业不太可能投资研发活动。此外，美国公认会计准则将这些投资视为费用。因此，宗教公司的收入支出较少，陷入财务困境的可能性也较小。

设计/方法论/途径

数据收集自 1985 年至 2018 年的 Worldscope 以及美国宗教数据档案网站的教会和教会会员档案。作者利用美国背景下的 18,199 项观察，使用边际效应来检验研发会计处理的中介效应。

发现

作者发现，按照美国公认会计原则，宗教信仰对财务困境的边际效应高于研发成本资本化的宗教信仰对财务困境的边际效应，这意味着会计处理可以解释美国背景下的宗教信仰与财务困境之间的关系。

研究局限性/影响

作者使用线性插值和线性外推数据能够在 1985 年至 2018 年期间进行这项研究。在未来的研究中，作者建议根据道德因素测试其他可以解释宗教信仰与财务困境之间关系的因素。

实际影响

这些结果应该引起监管机构的兴趣，因为将研发活动视为费用可能会破坏那些喜欢投资风险项目的公司的会计业绩。这种偏袒阻碍了对同一行业中具有不同风险行为的两家公司进行比较。如果作者有两家宗教信仰比例不同的公司，这个问题就更普遍。本文存在与数据可用性相关的主要限制。

原创性/价值

这可能是第一项调查宗教公司陷入财务困境的可能性较小的原因的研究。本文指出，宗教企业陷入财务困境的可能性较小，因为它们对研发活动的保守行为与保守的研发会计处理相一致。事实上，研发活动的支出与收入之间的不匹配可能会导致财务困境。