Publication in European Financial Management

Professor Dr. Lars Hornuf has published a new article in European Financial Management under the title “The Performance of Socially Responsible Investments: A Meta-Analysis.” The article emerged in collaboration with Gül Yüksel from the University of Bremen

In this article, the authors use a meta-analysis to examine the performance of socially responsible investing (SRI). After conducting a thorough literature search, the authors review 153 empirical studies containing 1,047 observations of SRI performance. On average, SRI neither outperforms nor underperforms the market portfolio. However, in line with modern portfolio theory, the authors find that global SRI portfolios outperform regional sub-portfolios. Moreover, high-quality publications, publications in finance journals, and authors who publish more frequently on SRI are all less likely to report SRI outperformance. In particular, the authors find that including more factors in a capital market model reduces the likelihood that a study will find SRI outperformance. These findings have important implications for the policy evaluation of environmental, social, and governance goals in general, the asset management literature in particular, and the perspective of different scientific disciplines.