The Performance of Socially Responsible Mutual Funds: The Role of Fees and Management Companies

In this article, we shed light on the debate about the financial performance of socially responsible investment (SRI) mutual funds by separately analyzing the contributions of before-fee performance and fees to SRI funds’ performance, and by investigating the role played by fund management companies...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Authors: Gil-Bazo, Javier (Author) ; Ruiz-Verdú, Pablo (Author) ; Santos, André A. P. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2010
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2010, Volume: 94, Issue: 2, Pages: 243-263
Further subjects:B mutual fund performance
B Socially Responsible Investment
B mutual fund fees
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
Volltext (JSTOR)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:In this article, we shed light on the debate about the financial performance of socially responsible investment (SRI) mutual funds by separately analyzing the contributions of before-fee performance and fees to SRI funds’ performance, and by investigating the role played by fund management companies in the determination of those variables. We apply the matching estimator methodology to obtain our results and find that in the period 1997–2005, US SRI funds had better before- and after-fee performance than conventional funds with similar characteristics. The differences, however, are driven exclusively by SRI funds run by management companies specialized in SRI. While these funds significantly outperform similar conventional funds, funds run by companies not specialized in SRI underperform their matched conventional funds. We find no significant differences in fees between SRI and conventional funds except in one case: SRI funds are cheaper than conventional funds run by the same management company.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-009-0260-4