scholarly journals Socially Responsible Investments: Methodology, Risk and Performance

Author(s):  
Jenke R. ter Horst ◽  
Chendi Zhang ◽  
Luc Renneboog
2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabuha Ilgaz ◽  
Hans-Martin Zademach

Performative capital market practices. The case of socially responsible investments in Germany. Socially responsible investment (SRI), also referred to as sustainable, responsible or impact investing, is an investment discipline that does not only take conventional financial criteria into account (most notably return, risk and liquidity), but also puts emphasis on environmental, social, governance (ESG) considerations to generate long-term competitive financial returns and positive societal impact. Key instrument in this market are so-called sustainability ratings which seek to assess the economic, environmental and social values and performance of potential investment objects. Such ratings are produced by a worldwide growing, but still limited number of private rating agencies that offer a dazzling variety of - in some cases even contradictory - ratings, rankings, indices and awards that have an enormous potential to influence investment decisions of all kind of investors. Applying a cultural geographies of economies approach, the paper in-hand aims to shed new light on this particular group of financial agents and their particular practices. It presents original qualitative data from Germany that delivers insights on the different ways these agencies follow in their assessments, how they define, operationalize and perform the notion of sustainability, and how effective they are in actually contributing to a more sustainable world.


Author(s):  
Hidayah Bakar ◽  
Juliana Arifin ◽  
Norizan Remli

This paper presents a discussion of prior literature on the risk and performance of ethically compliant equity. This review of literature provides an organised evaluation of the available studies in ethical investment. In particular, this paper presents surveys of literature concerning shariah-compliant equity and socially responsible investments. The discussion of the literature synthesises the information in the respective studies into a summary. Each subsection provides an analysis of the information gathered by first providing an overview of the current empirical studies and, second, identifying gaps and showing the limitation of theoretical views in the existing studies. Discussion in previous literature emphases only one type of ethical investment, however, this paper, on the other hand, covers both the religious and social perspectives of ethics, which provide a more comprehensive view of ethics. The paper finds out that studies on the risk and performance of ethically compliant investment report mixed results. This is due to the disparities in the research methodological approach. However, it is almost unanimous that ethical funds demonstrate higher stability (lower risk) during the financial crisis and tend to outperform the conventional funds during this state of financial uncertainty. Future studies can conduct more firm-level analysis and integrates both screening criteria (shariah and socially responsible screening) to reconcile the results.   


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Risalvato ◽  
Claudio Venezia ◽  
Federica Maggio

This research paper shows the growing power of the practices of sustainable finance in the financial markets. The socially responsible investments (SRI), defined as a strategy to select issuers on the basis of both ESG Corporate Responsibility that financial factors, are rising a growing amount of capital. In fact, between 2012 and 2015 the SRI global asset increased of 61%, amounting to 21.4 billion of dollars. The proliferation of ethical indices in the various financial centers of the world is related to a significant growth of assets managed according to an investment strategy that rewards socially responsible companies. After the financial crisis of 2007, ethical or sustainable indices have generally performed better than traditional indices, which they are derived through a selection of stocks that are subject to strict requirements, the author show the performance of ethical finance compared with those of the traditional sector.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 958-987
Author(s):  
Łukasz Kozłowski ◽  
Iwa Kuchciak

This study investigates the thematic content of Facebook disclosures from small local banks (SLBs) in Poland, their impact on Facebook users’ attention, and the economic repercussions for SLBs’ growth and performance. Based on the specificity of SLBs and existing empirical evidence, it hypothesizes that disclosures on socially responsible issues increase customer attention and can be converted into economic outcomes. To verify the posed hypotheses, several data sources are employed, including a hand-collected dataset describing the specificity of Facebook activities from SLBs in Poland between 2010 and 2017, and a stepwise research strategy is implemented. First, models of SLBs’ Facebook disclosures are distinguished. Second, the kinds of social media activities that ensure SLBs’ popularity among Facebook users are determined. Third, the thematic content of SLBs’ Facebook disclosures is related to their growth or performance indicators. The collected evidence shows that SLBs, as expected, can garner attention if they concentrate their social media activities mainly on socially responsible or local issues. Moreover, socially responsible activities and economic outcomes are generally not opposed, but only a careful selection of specific social disclosures can effectively exploit social media to the economic advantage of SLBs.


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