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Socially responsible investing: does the social pillar of firms´ ESG factors provide information for investors- portfolio returns? Evidence from Europe

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Bibliographic Details
Summary:Using a large dataset of social ratings, this empirical analysis examines the financial performance of portfolios based on socially responsible investments in European equities. While there remains a dissensus among academics whether socially responsible investments can yield a significant outperformance, this thesis provides evidence that socially driven investments can provide positive and statistically significant risk-adjusted returns to the investor. Portfolios are for med through the best-in-class/ worst-in-class approach, using social ratings cores and sub-scores. Portfolio performance is evaluated in a Fama-French-Carhart four-factor model, providing evidence for positive and significant alphas within several long-only as well as net-zero investment portfolios (long-short).
Main Authors:Jaeger, Moritz Nikolaus
Subject:Factor investing Portfolio management Esg investing Socially responsible investing Social investing
Year:2022
Country:Portugal
Document type:master thesis
Access type:open access
Associated institution:Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Language:English
Origin:Repositório Institucional da UNL
Description
Summary:Using a large dataset of social ratings, this empirical analysis examines the financial performance of portfolios based on socially responsible investments in European equities. While there remains a dissensus among academics whether socially responsible investments can yield a significant outperformance, this thesis provides evidence that socially driven investments can provide positive and statistically significant risk-adjusted returns to the investor. Portfolios are for med through the best-in-class/ worst-in-class approach, using social ratings cores and sub-scores. Portfolio performance is evaluated in a Fama-French-Carhart four-factor model, providing evidence for positive and significant alphas within several long-only as well as net-zero investment portfolios (long-short).