We investigate the financial performance of the most valuable brands as provided by the publicly available Interbrand list on an annual basis. By applying standard multi-factor performance evaluation models, and the new five-factor model of Fama and French (2015), we observe that the most valuable brands outperform the market during the overall period from 2000 to June 2018 as well as during different market conditions. However, the extent of the outperformance is much larger during bear than during normal periods, suggesting that the most valuable brands tend to perform better during weak financial market periods. Moreover, we find that the outperformance is driven by only a few industries, e.g., business services, technology and retail. Analyzing the financial performance of the most valuable brands provided by Forbes and BrandZ reveals similar results to those of Interbrand.
This article analyzes the financial (out-) performance of all listed health care companies. The health care sector outperformed the market in the period from 2000 to June 2015. The performance was driven by companies from Americas, and Asia as well as companies from the pharmaceuticals sub-segment. Additionally, bull periods appear to be the main driver for the outperformance. Euro-based investors can expect different outcomes of their investments to those of USD investors. However, the main trends remain unchanged.
Nofsinger and Varma (2014) provide evidence that U.S. socially responsible funds outperform conventional funds during periods of market turmoil and, therefore, grant some crisis insurance. To investigate whether the U.S.-based evidence can be transferred to international markets, the authors analyze a comprehensive sample of internationally-investing socially responsible equity funds in a period from 2000 to 2012. As abnormal returns are model-specific, the authors apply standard and q-theory based performance measurement models. At first glance, the authors observe no crisis protection for internationally-investing socially responsible funds. However, splitting their sample in funds domiciled in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific to account for biases due to the origin of a fund, the authors find that socially responsible funds from North America outperform their peers in crisis periods irrespective of the applied performance evaluation model. The authors suggest that the U.S.-based evidence is restricted to internationally-investing funds domiciled in North America, and discover that this outperformance seems to be owed to the stock-picking abilities of North American fund managers and their advantage due to the nature of the North American market.
Keywords: socially responsible investments, mutual funds, international markets, performance evaluation, managerial abilities. JEL Classification: G11, G12, G15, G23, M14
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