The low volatility factor in conjunction with the style factors Quality, Value and Momentum, has empirically proven to be able to moderate market risks and improve a portfolio’s overall risk-return profile. By integrating ESG into such a factor portfolio, future risks may be mitigated. We...

Two competing hypotheses, value enhancing and value discounting, state that implementing socially responsible corporate policies can have positive or negative effects on firm value. This paper tests how a specific type of social responsibility–corporate equality–affects firm value. Corporate...

Islamic finance is the fastest growing segment of the global financial system and has been experiencing an impressive double-digit growth in recent history. Following the growth trend of Islamic finance, a rapidly rising affluent and well-educated Muslim middle class from the Islamic world and...

This paper empirically examines the theoretically ambivalent relationship between socially responsible investing (SRI) and stock performance. It extends the existing literature by considering both the US and the entire European stock markets as well as by using consistent world-wide corporate...

This paper empirically analyzes the effect of the inclusion of German corporations in the Dow Jones STOXX Sustainability Index (DJSI STOXX) and the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World) on stock performance. In order to receive robust estimation results, we apply an event study...

We exploit a modification to Sustainalytics' environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating methodology, which is subsequently adopted by Morningstar, to study whether ESG ratings are salient for stock pricing. We show that the inversion of the rating scale but not new information leads some...