Defining social investing and its boundaries is a challenging task. Since the religious beginning of ethical investments, many overlapping investment styles have been grouped into the bucket of socially responsible investments, or SRI. This includes, for instance, faith-based investments. In this paper we study the underlying principles of SRI and Islamic funds as investment classes, and try to determine whether Islamic mutual funds, as faith-based investments, can be included into the category of socially responsible mutual funds, or if they exhibit distinguishing characteristics that indicate that they would be more fittingly grouped in a separate investment family. We address the question from both a qualitative and quantitative point of view. Comparing ideas, ratios and investment styles underlying SRI and comparing them to Islamic portfolios, we identify the potential inconsistencies related to some of the investment decisions. Together with a qualitative assessment of the differences and similarities, we discuss, in the quantitative section of our study, the different sector and country composition of two generic portfolios, SRI and Islamic (proxied by relevant European indices), derived from the application of the investment screens. In addition, through a cointegration analysis on FTSE indices, we show that FTSE Islamic, exhibits peculiar and interesting portfolios' differences in terms of econometric profile, compared to conventional and SRI indices. This paper attempts to unify the studies regarding SRI, with the available studies on Islamic investments. To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first time that SRI and Islamic indices are analysed and compared. JEL Classification : G12, G14
Based on a sample of 54 Islamic indices over the period 2007–2014, we investigate the effect of Shariah board members' educational background on Islamic indices' risk and return characteristics via the screening criteria. Using a capital asset pricing model benchmark analysis, we assess the sensitivity of Islamic indices to their conventional peers in terms of beta and derive a measure of return (Jensen's alpha). First, we observe that the higher the number of members in common among the boards, the higher the risk–return profile of Islamic indices. Second, commonalities among board members lead to standardization of the screening criteria and to similar Islamic indices' performance. Third, we show that different betas across providers depend on the screening criteria, while the economic educational background of board members affects performance in terms of Jensen's alpha. Our study aims at contributing to the governance literature related to board composition and its importance as a possible driver of performance. In addition, given the impressive growth that Islamic finance has experienced during the last decade, this topic is of great interest to the asset management industry.
Taking the greatest socially responsible sovereign wealth fund in the world, namely, the Norwegian Government Pension Fund‐Global (GPF‐G), as a proxy for the world market portfolio, and collecting investment data from 2006 to 2021, our research studies how the attitude of environmentally concerned investors has changed, on different markets, over time, particularly before and after the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. We investigate, with an event study methodology, what happens to stock prices when companies are excluded from the GPF‐G portfolio for serious environmental violations, unacceptable level of greenhouse gas emissions, or for their involvement in thermal coal processing. In line with previous studies, our results show that Paris Agreement has acted as a catalyst for environmentally conscious behavior by international investors, and this is particularly true in Anglo‐Saxon countries. Especially US, Japanese, Chilean, Indian, and Canadian investors care about the environmental issues that have led to the exclusion from the fund investment portfolio. To the contrary, investors in China, Germany, Australia, and UK seem to have an opposite reaction, as the prices of the excluded stocks increase.
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