Socially Responsible Investment Funds Research Articles

Ethical Mutual Investment Funds and Islamic Investment Funds: A comparative study

Ethical investment funds or socially responsible investment funds (SRIFs) became among the most important financial instruments encouraged corporate social responsibility at the level of financial markets as investors rushed to financial products Which agree between social and environmental responsibility for investment with acceptable performance. Since investors become more aware of the benefits of Ethics and socially responsible investment, the interest in Islamic investing and Ethically Based Investment is also increasing.This paper is concerned with the role of ethical investment funds andIslamic investment funds in economic development and raising growth rates through the promotion of the financial market.This paper addresses four key points, First, the concept of ethical investment and Islamic investment, secondly the concept of Islamic and Islamic investment funds,thirdly study the role and importance of ethical investment funds and Islamic funds in financial market. And finallycomparing ideas, ratios and investment styles underlying SRI and comparing them to Islamic portfolios. with a qualitative assessment of the differences and similarities, SRI and Islamic derived from the application of the investment screens. The paper concluded that the creation of socially responsible investment funds should be considered to meet the wishes of all segments, particularly Ethical Investors.

Can Paying Taxes Substitute for Corporate Social Responsibility? Evidence from Socially Responsible Investment Funds

We examine whether corporate tax avoidance impacts the investment decisions of socially responsible investment (SRI) mutual funds. After controlling for corporate social responsibility (CSR) constructs, we find that investment by SRI funds is positively associated with paying corporate taxes. Whereas corporate tax avoidance does not affect SRI fund investment in firms with a strong CSR reputation, greater tax avoidance leads to significantly less SRI fund investment in firms as their CSR reputation weakens. These results hold after accounting for selection bias, controlling for earnings management and managerial entrenchment, and performing several robustness checks. Our findings suggest that socially responsible investors consider corporate tax avoidance an important aspect of CSR and they are consistent with recent findings in the literature that corporate insiders view paying taxes and CSR as substitutes.

Why Do Investors Hold Socially Responsible Mutual Funds?

ABSTRACTTo understand why investors hold socially responsible mutual funds, we link administrative data to survey responses and behavior in incentivized experiments. We find that both social preferences and social signaling explain socially responsible investment (SRI) decisions. Financial motives play less of a role. Socially responsible investors in our sample expect to earn lower returns on SRI funds than on conventional funds and pay higher management fees. This suggests that investors are willing to forgo financial performance in order to invest in accordance with their social preferences.

IMPORTANCE OF THE FUND MANAGEMENT COMPANY IN THE PERFORMANCE OF SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE MUTUAL FUNDS

AbstractWe compare the performance of a sample of U.K.‐based socially responsible investment (SRI) funds with similar conventional funds using a matched‐pair analysis based on size, age, investment universe, and fund management company (FMC). We find that both the SRI and conventional funds outperform the market index about 50% of the time, even after fees. Subsample tests show that the SRI funds in our sample perform better in the pre‐ and postfinancial crisis periods but underperform during the financial crisis period. Importantly, we find that the FMC plays a major role in the outperformance of both SRI and conventional funds.

Hedonic evaluation of the SRI label of mutual funds using matching methodology

Our aim is to analyse the causal effect of the Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) label on the market value of mutual funds using the hedonic approach. We work with the market value of mutual funds as the dependent variable and financial characteristics jointly with the SRI label as the independent variables. Prior to hedonic evaluation a matching methodology is applied to the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) variables in order to balance these characteristics on the two sub-samples: SRI and conventional mutual funds. Data for our empirical analysis come from the Vigeo Database for the non-financial characteristics, and from the Morningstar Database for the rest of the necessary data. The results of the empirical study shows that there is a direct and statistically significant relationship between the SRI label and the market value of mutual funds during the studied period. This finding provides evidence of the growth of SRI, in line with most current research.

Do 'Good Guys' Finish Last? The Relationship between Morningstar Sustainability Ratings and Mutual Fund Performance

Given the rapid growth of investment products focused on socially responsible investing (SRI), in March 2016 Morningstar began reporting standardized metrics to “grade” the Sustainability (i.e., SRI) level of thousands of mutual funds. While traditional financial theory suggests funds that limit their investment universe should underperform, we find that funds with high Sustainability scores have about the same risk-adjusted returns (i.e., alphas) as other funds. Thus, investors can apparently follow a social mandate without sacrificing financial performance, particularly within the large-cap space. We also find that funds with high Morningstar Sustainability scores generally mimic those of self-proclaimed SRI funds, suggesting that the new metric opens up a larger pool of potential funds for investors focused on SRI. However, funds that specifically designate a social mandate do experience more stable cash flows, suggesting that the mandate may be more beneficial for the fund company than it is for investors.

Cherry Picking or Depth-Oriented Strategic Investing? Evidence From SRI Activity

Today, socially responsible investing (SRI) represents the youngest financial-services industry that investors can exploit to implement their investment strategies. Although literature in this field is growing, additional research is needed to disentangle the factors affecting the performance of SRI funds. This paper focuses on the analysis of the influence that the depth of investment strategy by SRI funds may have on the investment performance, whereas larger SRI funds have a stronger capacity to address their investment choices. We used a sample of 149 USA SRI funds referring to the Social Investment Forum (SIF) Foundation in the period 2005-2010. We found that depth of investment strategy decreases the capacity of large SRI funds to reach positive financial returns if a broad sustainability investment strategy is pursued. On the other hand, SRI funds able to focus the attention on specific environmental, social, governance, or product criteria do increase their capacity to reach positive financial performance. This paper contributes to the existing literature by examining the depth of the sustainability investment strategy by SRI funds and investigating the moderating effect that peculiar investment strategies have on the well-known relation between size and performance of SRI funds. This paper analyzes the wealth distribution taking into account the reaction of the market to the alliance as an indicator of a successful strategy. It explores the case of the automobile industry, which is characterised by a high use of inter-firm cooperation, such as strategic alliances and mergers & acquisitions, to effectively compete in the global market and face the global crisis.

Markowitz revisited: Social portfolio engineering

In recent years socially responsible investing has become a popular subject with both private and institutional investors. At the same time, a number of scientific papers have been published on socially responsible investments (SRIs), covering a broad range of topics, from what actually defines SRIs to the financial performance of SRI funds in contrast to non-SRI funds. In this paper, we revisit Markowitz’ Portfolio Selection Theory and propose a modification allowing to incorporate not only asset-specific return and risk but also a social responsibility measure into the investment decision making process. Applied in an a posteriori fashion, the model results in a three-dimensional capital allocation plane illustrating the complete set of feasible optimal portfolios. It enables investors to custom–tailor their asset allocations and incorporate all personal preferences regarding return, risk and social responsibility. In an empirical analysis with a data set of over 6000 international companies (including the complete universe of social responsibility-rated stocks), we find that investors opting to maximize the social impact of their investments do indeed face a statistically significant decrease in expected returns. However, the social responsibility/risk-optimal portfolio yields a statistically significant higher social responsibility rating than the return/risk-optimal portfolio.

Cherry Picking or Depth-Oriented Strategic Investing? Evidence from SRI Activity

Today, socially responsible investing (SRI) represents the youngest financial-services industry that investors can exploit to implement their investment strategies. Although literature in this field is growing, additional research is needed to disentangle the factors affecting the performance of SRI funds. This paper focuses on the analysis of the influence that the depth of investment strategy by SRI funds may have on the investment performance, whereas larger SRI funds have a stronger capacity to address their investment choices. We used a sample of 149 USA SRI funds referring to the Social Investment Forum (SIF) Foundation in the period 2005-2010. We found that depth of investment strategy decreases the capacity of large SRI funds to reach positive financial returns if a broad sustainability investment strategy is pursued. On the other hand, SRI funds able to focus the attention on specific environmental, social, governance, or product criteria do increase their capacity to reach positive financial performance. This paper contributes to the existing literature by examining the depth of the sustainability investment strategy by SRI funds and investigating the moderating effect that peculiar investment strategies have on the well-known relation between size and performance of SRI funds. major-bidi;mso-bidi-theme-font:major-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA'>This paper analyzes the wealth distribution taking into account the reaction of the market to the alliance as an indicator of a successful strategy. It explores the case of the automobile industry, which is characterised by a high use of inter-firm cooperation, such as strategic alliances and mergers & acquisitions, to effectively compete in the global market and face the global crisis.

Can SRI funds better resist global financial crisis? Evidence from Japan

This paper compared Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) funds and conventional funds in the Japanese market with respect to the impact of the global financial crisis in 2008. Taking the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers as a particular event, we estimated the average cumulative abnormal returns of both funds by event study methodology using a Fama–French three-factor model and EGARCH model. Our results suggest that SRI funds better resisted the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers than conventional funds. We also found that this result can be attributed to the existence of international funds, possibly because investors might evaluate the CSR activities of international firms more than those of domestic firms. Alternatively, it can be interpreted that the universe of domestic SRI funds is too limited to enjoy risk diversification.

Evaluation of the Cultural Environment’s Impact on the Performance of the Socially Responsible Investment Funds

Socially responsible (SR) mutual funds match financial and environmental, social, and governance criteria in their portfolio management strategies. Several studies have examined the behavior of these funds in terms of return–risk, obtaining very different results. The present study discusses previous results and shows how these funds often outperform their conventional counterparts. Rather than the SR (or non) character of a mutual fund, a relevant explanation for this behavior is the cultural environment in which the fund operates. Thus, the ethical framework or corporate social responsibility used by the fund and its management must be assessed by considering the cultural context of the fund. This notion is the main contribution of this paper.

The Performance of European Socially Responsible Fixed-Income Funds

Evidence to date on the performance of Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) has almost exclusively been conducted within equity markets. We provide new evidence on the potential of SRI for other asset classes, by assessing the performance of SRI fixed-income funds. This is the first comprehensive investigation on the performance of European SRI bond and balanced funds, domiciled in the main European markets (France, Germany and the UK), compared to characteristics-matched conventional funds.Our results, based on a conditional multi-factor model with time-varying alphas and betas, show that in most cases European SRI balanced funds exhibit no statistically significant differences in performance in relation to conventional funds, both during the overall sample period as well as during recession and expansion periods separately. With regard to SRI bond funds, empirical evidence is mixed. French SRI bond funds match the performance of their conventional peers, German funds slightly outperform and UK funds significantly underperform conventional funds. Furthermore, during expansion periods, funds from the Euro-Area countries significantly outperform their conventional peers, whereas during recessions they are able to perform at least as well as conventional funds. These results mean that SRI funds in the fixed-income area seem to provide additional protection to investors in market downturns.

Fundusze inwestycyjne na rynku inwestycji społecznie odpowiedzialnych

The paper considers the role of socially responsible investment funds in the socially responsible investments (SRI) market. On the basis of theoretical considerations and empirical studies, this hypothesis was verified: SRI mutual funds play a key role in shaping and developing the SRI market. A number of objectives were carried out for the research. The first part of the article characterises the SRI market and its participants. This was followed by an examination of the specifics of socially responsible mutual funds. The next part of the article analyses the structure and size of the SRI market and presents the role of SRI funds in this market. Observations formulated on the basis of the studies done for this paper leads to the conclusion that there are no grounds to reject the research hypothesis: SRI funds are key in shaping and developing the SRI market.

The Rise of Socially Responsible Investing Funds: The Paradoxical Role of Finance (WITHDRAWN)

Socially responsible investing (SRI) is gaining relevance in the financial sector, and the number of SRI funds is steadily increasing, but how the institutions of finance affect the founding of the...

Process-oriented social responsibility indicator for mutual funds: a multi-criteria decision analysis approach

In recent years, socially responsible investing (SRI) has grown from a niche to a mainstream investment strategy. Consequently, the supply of SRI mutual funds expanded and a discussion on the performance of SRI funds developed. The traditional approach to measuring mutual fund performance does not take into account possible heterogeneity with respect to social responsibility and focuses on a dichotomous SRI versus non-SRI typology. We consider multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to build an indicator to capture the multi-faceted nature of SRI. Considering extensive robustness analysis and additional criteria, we find the PROMETHEE methodology to be most recommended for both academic and professional applications. The obtained scores and rankings prove to be highly robust and are in line with generally accepted intuition in the industry. The proposed PROMETHEE-based indicator is also easy to understand and implement, which makes it highly suited for implementation in mutual fund performance research.

Markowitz Revisited Social Portfolio Engineering

In recent years socially responsible investing has become an increasingly more popular subject with both private and institutional investors. At the same time, a number of scientific papers have been published on socially responsible investments (SRIs), covering a broad range of topics, from what actually defines SRIs to the financial performance of SRI funds in contrast to non-SRI funds. In this paper, we revisit Markowitz’ Portfolio Selection Theory and propose a modification allowing to incorporate not only asset-specific return and risk expectations but also a social responsibility measure into the investment decision making process. Together with a risk-free asset, this results in a three-dimensional capital allocation plane that allows investors to custom-tailor their asset-allocations and incorporate all personal preferences regarding risk, return and social responsibility. We apply the model on a set of over 9000 international stocks and find that investors opting to maximize the social impact of their investments do indeed face a statistically significant decrease in expected returns. However, the social responsibility/risk-optimal portfolio yields a statistically significant higher social responsibility rating than the return/risk-optimal portfolio.

Performance and performance persistence of socially responsible investment funds in Europe and North America

We analyze, and compare, performance and performance persistence of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) funds in Europe and North America. We use a broad sample of 500 European and 248 North American SRI funds for the period January 2001–December 2011. We find that SRI funds outperform the market benchmark in Europe and North America over this period and that North American SRI funds perform better than European SRI funds. We find little evidence of performance persistence in either region using a ranked portfolio approach; however, there is more evidence of performance persistence in European SRI funds than in their North American counterparts using a non-parametric ranked portfolio approach.

Are SRI Funds Conventional Funds in Disguise or Do They Live Up to Their Name?

In recent years, the socially responsible investing (SRI) industry has become an important segment of international capital markets by incorporating ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) factors into investment selection and management processes. This study analyses whether SRI mutual funds are conventional funds in disguise or invest in line with their ESG objectives. In contrast to other studies, the analysis exclusively focuses on the non-financial performance of SRI vis-a-vis conventional funds and applies ESG corporate ratings of three rating agencies (Oekom, Sustainalytics and ASSET4) to a European and global fund universe. The SRI and non-SRI funds are analyzed with respect to differences in their Top 10 fund holdings, their average ESG rankings and the significance of rating differences by utilizing cross-sectional regressions. At a first glance, the top holdings of both fund types seem very similar, but the results of the ranking analysis show that SRI funds have on average higher ESG rankings. Additionally, the cross-sectional regressions show that the ESG rating differences between SRI funds and conventional funds are significantly positive, i.e. SRI funds exhibit higher ESG ratings than conventional funds. These findings are robust as they hold for every single ESG factor and total scores and as well as across the different ratings applied.

Performance of European socially responsible funds during market crises: Evidence from France

This paper investigates the performance, investment styles and managerial abilities of French socially responsible investment (SRI) funds investing in Europe during crisis and non-crisis periods. Our results show that SRI funds significantly underperform characteristics-matched conventional funds during non-crisis periods, but match the performance of their peers during market downturns. The underperformance of SRI funds during good economic states is driven by funds that use negative screens, since funds that use only positive screens perform similarly to conventional funds across different market conditions. SRI and conventional funds show significant differences in risk exposures during non-crisis periods but exhibit much more similar investment styles during crises. Furthermore, we find little evidence of significant differences in managerial abilities during bad economic states. Yet, during non-crisis periods, SRI and conventional fund managers exhibit significantly different style-timing abilities and these differences are also related to screening strategies.

What is Different about Socially Responsible Funds? A Holdings-Based Analysis

We provide a comprehensive analysis of differences between socially responsible investment (SRI) and conventional funds in terms of manager characteristics, performance and fund styles. We use holdings-based analysis to evaluate fund performance and style, which allows us to perform a more in-depth analysis than the extant literature. We find that SRI managers have longer tenure and are more likely to be a female. However, these differences do not result in any significant difference in the performance of SRI and conventional funds. Further, it is possible to find an SRI fund of any style, although these funds are under-represented in value styles.