Performance of Socially Responsible Stocks Portfolios - The Impact of Global Financial Crisis

For the effective and better implementation of CSR law, development of SRI market in the investment world is essential. Unless the investors turn socially responsible, CSR principles cannot be enforced in practice. This paper examines whether the companies that are socially responsible are performing better than general companies in terms of risk, return and various risk-adjusted measures during pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis periods. We find that despite having higher risk, socially responsible stocks portfolios generated significantly higher returns and hence outperformed other portfolios on the basis of all risk-adjusted measures as well as net selectivity returns during crisis period. The results uphold even with the use of Fama-French three factor model for estimating excess returns. Besides augmenting existing literature, our results clearly corroborate the fact that investors can derive benefits by investing in socially responsible companies (especially in crisis period). The study supports the view that socially responsible products can be used as a safe investment vehicle by investors during adversity. Therefore, regulators, policy makers and mutual funds should construct and make available various socially responsible investment products to initiate the movement of socially responsible investing in India