We document that a firm's culture — specifically, its religiosity — affects its cost of debt. Firms in higher-religiosity counties have higher credit ratings and lower debt costs. The impact of religiosity is stronger for firms with greater information asymmetry and during recessions....

Using a unique dataset of dealer-level trading data in bookbuilding IPOs, we find strong evidence that lead underwriter trades in IPO firms are significantly related to subsequent IPO abnormal returns. This relation is concentrated among issues in which underwriters' information advantage is...