Are they any good at all? A financial and ethical analysis of socially responsible mutual funds

Sabastian Utz and Maximillian Wimmer ()
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Maximillian Wimmer: University of Regensburg

Journal of Asset Management, 2014, vol. 15, issue 1, No 6, 72-82

Abstract: Abstract In this article, we examine a broad sample of socially responsible (SR) and conventional mutual funds with respect to financial and ethical parameters. We cannot document profound differences in their financial performance. With regard to ethical performance, we indeed find that an investor who seeks to avoid the least ethical of all available funds can do so by purchasing SR mutual funds. Still, we also demonstrate that SR mutual funds are not holding considerably more ethical assets on average. Moreover, the label ‘SR mutual fund’ does not in any way guarantee the exclusion of clearly unethical firms, which contrasts to the common perception of screening out poor assets.

Keywords: socially responsible investment; performance analysis; mutual funds; ESG-scores (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

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DOI: 10.1057/jam.2014.8

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