Ethical Screening and Financial Performance: The Case of Islamic Equity Funds

Whether ethical screening affects portfolio performance is an important question that is yet to be settled in the literature. This paper aims to shed further light on this question by examining the performance of a large global sample of Islamic equity funds (IEFs) from 1984 to 2010. We find that IE...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics
Authors: Nainggolan, Yunieta (Author) ; How, Janice (Author) ; Verhoeven, Peter (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2016
In: Journal of business ethics
Further subjects:B A13
B G11
B Islamic equity funds
B Ethical investments
B Fund performance
B G34
B G23
B G12
B Z12
B Ethical Screening
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Whether ethical screening affects portfolio performance is an important question that is yet to be settled in the literature. This paper aims to shed further light on this question by examining the performance of a large global sample of Islamic equity funds (IEFs) from 1984 to 2010. We find that IEFs underperform conventional funds by an average of 40 basis points per month, consistent with the underperformance hypothesis. In line with popular media claims that Islamic funds are a safer investment, IEFs outperformed conventional funds during the recent banking crisis. However, we find no such outperformance for other crises or high volatility periods. Based on fund holdings-based data, we provide evidence of a negative curvilinear relation between fund performance and ethical screening intensity, consistent with a return trade-off to being more ethical.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-014-2529-5