本文基于手工搜集的、2008-2010年期间污染行业的A股上市公司环境责任与佛教的相关数据，实证分析了中国佛教是否、以及如何影响公司的环境绩效。研究发现，佛教与公司环境绩效显著正相关，但法律环境调和了佛教与公司环境绩效之间的正相关关系。这一研究，为宗教与社会责任行为、特别是环境责任提供了重要的经验证据支持。Using a sample of Chinese listed firms in polluting industries for the period of 2008–2010, we empirically investigate whether and how Buddhism, China’s most influential religion, affects corporate environmental responsibility (CER). In this study, we measure Buddhist variables as the number of Buddhist monasteries within a certain radius around Chinese listed firms’ registered addresses. In addition, we hand-collect corporate environmental disclosure scores based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting guidelines. Using hand-collected Buddhism data and corporate environmental disclosure scores, we provide strong and robust evidence that Buddhism is significantly positively associated with CER. This finding is consistent with the following view: Buddhism can serve as social norms to evoke the consciousness of social responsibility, and thereof strengthen CER. Our findings also reveal that the positive association between Buddhism and CER is attenuated for firms with higher law enforcement index. The results are robust to various measures of Buddhism and a variety of sensitivity tests.http://news.xmu.edu.cn/s/13/t/542/20/94/info139412.ht

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杜兴强教授，2001年毕业于厦门大学会计系，获博士学位，并留校任教，现为厦门大学会计系教授、博士生导师；2004年入选教育部首届新世纪优秀人才计划；2006、2010年先后获教育部霍英东高等院校青年教师基金、霍英东高等院校青年教师奖一等奖，兼任第十届全国青联委员、福建省青联常委。曾主持国家自然科学基金、社会科学基金项目多项；作为主要贡献者获得国家级教学成果二等奖、教育部人文社科优秀成果一等奖、福建省社会科学一等奖等。In China, Buddhism and Taoism are two major religions. Using a sample of 10,363 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market for the period of 2001–2010, I provide strong and robust evidence that religion (i.e., Buddhism and Taoism on the whole) is significantly negatively associated with owner-manager agency costs. In particular, using firm-level religion data measured by the number of religious sites within a radius of certain distance around a listed firm’s registered address, I find that religion is significantly negatively (positively) associated with expense ratio (asset utilization ratio), the positive (reverse) proxy for owner-manager agency costs. This finding is consistent with the following view: religiosity has remarkable effects on the way how an individual thinks and behaves, and thereof can curb managers from unethical business practices. Moreover, my findings suggest that the negative association between religion and owner-manager agency costs is attenuated for firms with strong external monitoring mechanisms such as higher Marketization and high-quality auditors. Furthermore, after separating Buddhism from Taoism, my finding indicates that above conclusions are only available for Buddhism, suggesting that different religions may have asymmetric influence on owner-manager agency costs. Above results are robust to various measures of religiosity and a variety of robustness checks

Using a sample of 12,061 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market for the period of 2001-2011 and geographic-proximity-based Confucianism variables, this study provides strong evidence that Confucianism is significantly negatively associated with minority shareholder expropriation, implying that Confucianism does mitigate agency conflicts between the controlling shareholder and minority shareholders. This finding suggests that Confucianism has important influence on business ethics, and thus can serve as an important ethical philosophy or social norm to mitigate the controlling shareholder's unethical expropriation behavior. Moreover, my findings reveal that the nature of the ultimate owner attenuates the negative association between Confucianism and minority shareholder expropriation, suggesting that Confucianism's negative impact on minority shareholder expropriation is less pronounced for state-owned enterprises than for non-state-owned enterprises. The above results are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests and my findings are valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity between Confucianism and minority shareholder expropriation.

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