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PurposeThe main goal of this paper is better understand the risk/return trade-off of investing in socially responsible investment funds (SRIF) and green investment funds (GIF).Design/methodology/approachTo achieve our aim a green investment fund portfolio, a socially responsible investment portfolio and a conventional fund (CF) portfolio from the United States of America (USA) were selected to compare the efficiency of these three different portfolios, by using Value-Based Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology.FindingsThe results point out that SRIF and GIF are more efficient than CF. For five years, the CFs have not outperformed the GIF.Originality/valueThe results suggest that there is a growing awareness on the part of investors that sustainable companies are the companies that will allow a better quality of life and a more sustainable environment. It seems that somehow managers and investors are aware that the market will compensate them for thinking about a cleaner and more equitable world.

The socially responsible investment (SRI) funds performances remain inconclusive. Hence, more studies need to be conducted to determine if SRI funds systematically underperform or outperform conventional funds. This paper has employed dynamic mean-variance model using shortage function approach to evaluate the performance of SRI and Environmentally friendly funds (EF). Unlike the traditional methods, this approach estimates fund performance considering both the return and risk at the same time. The empirical results show that SRI funds outperformed conventional funds in EU and US. In addition, the results of EU are among the top-performing categories. EF do not perform as well as SRI, but perform in manners equal or superior to conventional funds. These results show statistically significant in some cases.

The paper introduces and confirms the following hypothesis: the system of the investment fund market indicators can be considered as an indicator of the country's socio-economic development. In order to confirm the suggested hypothesis the paper has investigated the advantages and disadvantages of investment funds, promoting and hindering expansions of investment funds in the collective investment market, and has developed their classification according to a number of attributes. A system of indicative ratios of socio-economic development has been proposed in relation to the investment fund market: number of open-end mutual funds; net asset value of open-end mutual funds; capital inflow (outflow) into open-end mutual funds. The analysis of the Russian open-end mutual fund market has been performed. Based on this analysis, conclusions about the state of the economic and social development in Russia have been made.

Financial economics and corporate governance have long focused on the agency problems between corporate managers and shareholders that result from the dispersion of ownership in large publicly traded corporations. In this paper, we focus on how the rise of institutional investors over the past several decades has transformed the corporate landscape and, in turn, the governance problems of the modern corporation. The rise of institutional investors has led to increased concentration of equity ownership, with most public corporations now having a substantial proportion of their shares held by a small number of institutional investors. At the same time, these institutions are controlled by investment managers, which have their own agency problems vis-à-vis their own beneficial investors. We develop an analytical framework for understanding the agency problems of institutional investors, and apply it to examine the agency problems and behavior of several key types of investment managers, including those that manage mutual funds—both index funds and actively managed funds—and activist hedge funds. We show that index funds have especially poor incentives to engage in stewardship activities that could improve governance and increase value. Activist hedge funds have substantially better incentives than managers of index funds or active mutual funds. While their activities may partially compensate, we show that they do not provide a complete solution for the agency problems of other institutional investors.

This study aims to investigate whether fund investors change their investment fund type depending on the return change of assets such as stocks, bonds, and housing. For this purpose, we examine the substitution relation among the equity, bond, and real estate investment funds by employing the net inflow. In particular, investment funds are classified according to investment objective, investment region, and investor. The main findings are as follows: first, the stock return of change is not attributed to the substitution relation among equity, bond, and real estate investment funds, which remains consistent across investment region and investors. Second, the yield change of three-year treasury bonds is attributed to the substitution relation between equity and bond investment funds. That is, if the bond yield increases and the bond prices decrease in turn, then money will go to the ‘domestic’ equity funds and goes out of the ‘domestic and international’ bond funds. The substitution relation is revealed between ‘publicly placed’ equity and ‘publicly and privately placed’ bond investment funds. Third, housing return of change is attributed to the substitution relation between domestic and international real estate investment funds. This implies that if housing prices rise, then money will go into the ‘domestic’ real estate investment funds and go out of ‘international’ real estate investment funds. The substitution relations among investment funds suggest that fund investors consider the return change of assets when determining investment funds.

Motivation: Securitisation investment funds are considered as the most suitable vehicle for the process of securitisation. The paper refers to the issue of establishing, functioning and development of securitisation investment funds in Poland, which are special type of closed-end investment funds managed by investment fund companies (IFC).Aim: The aim of the paper is an appraisal of the securitisation investment funds market in Poland with a special attention paid to its evolution and prospects of development. In the paper a securitisation investment fund was presented as a one of the type of investment funds in Poland based on the Polish legislation. We enclose the results of the survey conducted in Poland amongst the mentioned funds and present the appraisal of major stimulants and barriers of development of securitisation and securitisation investment funds market.Results: Upon the research we find that despite low level of using of securitisation in the past its perspectives of development are appraised positively by IFCs. Majority of questioned IFCs indicate existence of particular barriers for development of securitisation in Poland. According to IFCs with and without securitisation investment funds, the most problematic areas are: lack of proper regulations and high complexity of the securitisation itself. From the point of view of investment funds industry securitisation is evaluated as of average interest despite funds are leading in development of the considered financial technique in Poland.

To rationalize the well-known underperformance of the average actively managed mutual fund, we exploit the fact that retail funds in different market segments compete for different types of investors. Within the segment of funds marketed directly to retail investors, we show that flows chase risk-adjusted returns, and that funds respond by investing more in active management. Importantly, within this direct-sold segment, we find no evidence that actively managed funds underperform index funds. In contrast, we show that actively managed funds sold through brokers face a weaker incentive to generate alpha and significantly underperform index funds.

This paper considers the structure, governance and performance of a unique class of mutual funds that receives capital only from individuals, and reinvests this contributed capital in private companies, as opposed to traditional mutual funds that invest in publicly traded companies. It considers the particular class of mutual funds known as Canadian Labour-Sponsored Investment Funds (LSIFs). In contrast to expectations, it is shown that LSIFs have artificially low betas, returns that have significantly underperformed industry benchmarks, average management expense ratios greater than 4%, and have collectively accumulated $Can10 billion (£4.3 billion) as at 2005 since their statutory inception in various Canadian jurisdictions in the 1980s and 1990s. It is shown that these incongruous data are directly attributable to the LSIF statutory governance structure.

This article aims at analyzing how controlling shareholders’ representatives on boards affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies (disclosing CSR matters) in Spain, a context characterized by high ownership concentration, one-tier boards, little board independence, weak legal protection for investors, and the presence of large shareholders, especially institutional shareholders. Furthermore, among controlling shareholders’ representatives, we can distinguish between those appointed by insurance companies and banks and those appointed by mutual funds, investment funds, and pension funds. The effect of these categories of directors on CSR strategies is, therefore, also analyzed. Our findings suggest that controlling shareholders’ representatives have a positive effect on CSR strategies, as do directors appointed by investment funds, pension funds, and mutual funds, while directors appointed by banks and insurance companies have no impact on CSR strategies. This analysis offers new insights into the role played by certain types of directors on CSR strategies.

Sovereign wealth funds have emerged as major investors in corporate and real resources worldwide. After an overview of their magnitude, we consider the institutional arrangements under which many of the sovereign wealth funds operate. We focus on a specific set of agency problems that is of first-order importance for these funds: that is, the direct involvement of political leaders in the management process. We show that sovereign wealth funds with greater involvement of political leaders in fund management are associated with investment strategies that seem to favor short-term economic policy goals in their respective countries at the expense of longer-term maximization of returns. Sovereign wealth funds face several other issues, like how best to cope with demands for transparency, which can allow others to copy their investment strategies, and how to address the problems that arise with sheer size, like the difficulties of scaling up investment strategies that only work with a smaller value of assets under investment. In the conclusion, we discuss how various approaches cultivated by effective institutional investors worldwide—from investing in the best people to pioneering new asset classes to compartmentalizing investment activities—may provide clues as to how sovereign wealth funds might address these issues.