Importance of the fund management company in the performance of socially responsible mutual funds

We compare the performance of a sample of UK based 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. Sub sample tests show that the SRI funds in our sample perform better in the pre and post financial crisis periods while underperforming during the financial crisis period. Importantly, we find that the FMC plays a major role in the outperformance of both SRI and conventional funds.

Final Accepted manuscript: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Belghitar, Y., Clark, E. and Deshmukh, N. (2017), Importance of the fund management company in the performance of socially responsible mutual funds. The Journal of Financial Research, 40: 349–367. doi:10.1111/jfir.12127, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.12127. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.

Published version: © 2017 The Authors. The Journal of Financial Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Southern Finance Association and the Southwestern Finance Association
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