First draft. Please do not quote without permissionWe would like to thank colleagues and seminar participants at the University of Exeter for their comments on an earlier version of this paper, Richard Harris for his helpful suggestions on test statistics, and Maria Michou for her assistance with updating the Fama French and Momentum factors used in this paper. The usual caveats with respect to errors and omissions apply.
2Performance and Performance Persistence of "Ethical" Unit Trusts in the UK Abstract Using UK style portfolios that are free of any survivorship bias we examine performance, and persistence in the performance, of UK "ethical" or SRI funds, and compare them to a control group of non-SRI funds. In addition, given evidence that many UK funds which claim to be international in nature may exhibit home bias in their portfolio allocations, we propose a new measure for performance of international funds that allows for this and show that such recognition has important implications for the conclusions drawn on performance. We show that SRI funds have less exposure to HML, but greater exposure to SMB and momentum factors, and that neither SRI nor non-SRI funds exhibit significant under performance on a risk/style adjusted basis, despite comparatively poor absolute performance. We also show that performance appears to be time-varying, and that conclusions on performance itself are influenced by whether a static or time varying model is employed. We then examine persistence in fund performance and find evidence that supports persistence.In addition, we find there are differences in performance persistence between ethical and non-ethical funds, but conclusions on the degree of persistence and the direction of persistence appear to depend on the performance metric chosen. However, it is always the case that past winner "ethical" funds outperform "loser" ethical funds at 12 month horizons, such that there is evidence that "ethical" investors can enhance investment performance by investing in past "winners" and avoiding past "losers".3
In this article, marketing is considered a tool for performing the economy, a means by which a particular economic and political ideology has been reproduced and disseminated. Despite the early success of this project in improving and progressing the quality of peoples' lives, it is doubtful that this progress can be sustained in the 21st century. Marketing and its technologies are fundamental to sustaining economic growth, yet the provision of more goods and services into the marketplace -the provision of more choice -appears not to deliver on its theoretical promise of making people happier with their lives. The source of this discontent is examined from a psychoanalytical perspective.
In this paper, using a generalised valuation framework inspired by Ohlson, we show that corporate social performance (CSP) is value relevant and that, in particular, it appears to be associated with a higher coefficient on earnings. This could be attributable to either a lower cost of equity for these firms, or greater earnings persistence. We show that, once industry membership is controlled for, any cost of capital effect is minimal. Regression tests based on realised earnings confirm that the valuation effect is attributable mainly to greater earnings persistence in firms with higher levels of CSP. These outcomes are consistent with higher CSP conferring a competitive advantage on firms.
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