IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v39y2021ics1544612319313777.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What's in a (Green) Name? The Consequences of Greening Fund Names on Fund Flows, Turnover, and Performance

Author

Listed:
  • Ghoul, Sadok El
  • Karoui, Aymen

Abstract

We examine a sample of U.S. mutual funds and find that, between 2003 and 2018, 28 funds have changed their names to a sustainability-related appellation. Following the name change, we observe three main outcomes: (i) an increase in fund flows, (ii) a significant rise in portfolio turnover, and (iii) no substantial change in fund betas and alpha.

Suggested Citation

  • Ghoul, Sadok El & Karoui, Aymen, 2021. "What's in a (Green) Name? The Consequences of Greening Fund Names on Fund Flows, Turnover, and Performance," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:39:y:2021:i:c:s1544612319313777
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2020.101620
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612319313777
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101620?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas W. Doellman & Jennifer Itzkowitz & Jesse Itzkowitz & Sabuhi H. Sardarli, 2019. "Alphabeticity Bias in 401(k) Investing," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 54(4), pages 643-677, November.
    2. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    3. Renneboog, Luc & Ter Horst, Jenke & Zhang, Chendi, 2008. "The price of ethics and stakeholder governance: The performance of socially responsible mutual funds," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 302-322, June.
    4. Rob Bauer & Jeroen Derwall & Rogér Otten, 2007. "The Ethical Mutual Fund Performance Debate: New Evidence from Canada," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 70(2), pages 111-124, January.
    5. Espenlaub, Susanne & Haq, Imtiaz ul & Khurshed, Arif, 2017. "It's all in the name: Mutual fund name changes after SEC Rule 35d-1," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 123-134.
    6. Benson, Karen L. & Humphrey, Jacquelyn E., 2008. "Socially responsible investment funds: Investor reaction to current and past returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(9), pages 1850-1859, September.
    7. Michael J. Cooper & Huseyin Gulen & P. Raghavendra Rau, 2005. "Changing Names with Style: Mutual Fund Name Changes and Their Effects on Fund Flows," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(6), pages 2825-2858, December.
    8. Nofsinger, John & Varma, Abhishek, 2014. "Socially responsible funds and market crises," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 180-193.
    9. Green, T. Clifton & Jame, Russell, 2013. "Company name fluency, investor recognition, and firm value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 813-834.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yi, Er, 2023. "Corporate governance, information disclosure and investment - Cash flow sensitivity," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(PB).
    2. Cheraghali, Hamid & Igeh, Sofia Aarstad & Lin, Kuan-Heng & Molnár, Peter & Wijerathne, Iddamalgodage, 2022. "Online attention and mutual fund performance: Evidence from Norway," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    3. Barros, Victor & Falcão, Pedro Fontes & Sarmento, Joaquim Miranda, 2022. "Are more sustainable firms able to operate with lower working capital requirements?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 46(PB).
    4. Bertrand Candelon & Jean-Baptiste Hasse & Quentin Lajaunie, 2021. "ESG-Washing in the Mutual Funds Industry? From Information Asymmetry to Regulation," Risks, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-23, November.
    5. Kleffel, Philipp & Muck, Matthias, 2023. "Aggregate confusion or inner conflict? An experimental analysis of investors’ reaction to greenwashing," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    6. Ma, Wenchao & Duan, Xiaoman & Tang, Yongjun, 2023. "Enterprise sustainable development and green fund concern: The analysis and test of R&D from listed companies in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    7. Aymen Karoui & Sadok El Ghoul, 2022. "Fund names versus family names: Implications for mutual fund flows," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 57(3), pages 509-531, August.
    8. Shi, Yang & Chen, Shu & Liu, Ruiming & Kang, Yankun, 2022. "Fund renaming and fund flows: Evidence from China's stock market crash in 2015," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Juan Carlos Matallín-Sáez & Amparo Soler-Domínguez & Emili Tortosa-Ausina, 2016. "Ethical strategy focus and mutual fund management: performance and persistence," Working Papers 2016/01, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    2. El Ghoul, Sadok & Karoui, Aymen, 2017. "Does corporate social responsibility affect mutual fund performance and flows?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 53-63.
    3. Bertrand Candelon & Jean-Baptiste Hasse & Quentin Lajaunie, 2021. "ESG-Washing in the Mutual Funds Industry? From Information Asymmetry to Regulation," Risks, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-23, November.
    4. Lapanan, Nicha, 2018. "The investment behavior of socially responsible individual investors," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 214-226.
    5. Ya Dai & Liang Guo & Steve Liu & Hongxian Zhang, 2023. "Are socially responsible exchange‐traded funds paying off in performance?," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 23(1), pages 4-26, March.
    6. Muñoz, Fernando, 2016. "Cash flow timing skills of socially responsible mutual fund investors," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 110-124.
    7. Soler-Domínguez, Amparo & Matallín-Sáez, Juan Carlos, 2016. "Socially (ir)responsible investing? The performance of the VICEX Fund from a business cycle perspective," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 190-195.
    8. Xing Chen & Bert Scholtens, 2018. "The urge to act: A comparison of active and passive socially responsible investment funds in the United States," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(6), pages 1154-1173, November.
    9. Mehmet Balcilar & Riza Demirer & Rangan Gupta, 2017. "Do Sustainable Stocks Offer Diversification Benefits for Conventional Portfolios? An Empirical Analysis of Risk Spillovers and Dynamic Correlations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-18, October.
    10. Fernando Muñoz, 2020. "How do the size and independence of the board of trustees affect the financial and sustainable performance of socially responsible mutual funds?," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(4), pages 1834-1850, July.
    11. Leite, Paulo & Cortez, Maria Céu, 2015. "Performance of European socially responsible funds during market crises: Evidence from France," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 132-141.
    12. Derwall, Jeroen & Koedijk, Kees & Ter Horst, Jenke, 2011. "A tale of values-driven and profit-seeking social investors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 2137-2147, August.
    13. Fernando Muñoz & María Vargas & Ruth Vicente, 2021. "Style-changing behaviour in the socially responsible mutual fund industry: consequences on financial and sustainable performance," Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 12(5), pages 1027-1051, February.
    14. Nofsinger, John R. & Sulaeman, Johan & Varma, Abhishek, 2019. "Institutional investors and corporate social responsibility," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 700-725.
    15. Federica Ielasi & Monica Rossolini, 2019. "Responsible or Thematic? The True Nature of Sustainability-Themed Mutual Funds," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-17, June.
    16. Nakai, Miwa & Yamaguchi, Keiko & Takeuchi, Kenji, 2016. "Can SRI funds better resist global financial crisis? Evidence from Japan," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 12-20.
    17. Jacquelyn Humphrey & Darren Lee, 2011. "Australian Socially Responsible Funds: Performance, Risk and Screening Intensity," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 102(4), pages 519-535, September.
    18. Aymen Karoui & Sadok El Ghoul, 2022. "Fund names versus family names: Implications for mutual fund flows," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 57(3), pages 509-531, August.
    19. Javier Gil-Bazo & Pablo Ruiz-Verdú & André Santos, 2010. "The Performance of Socially Responsible Mutual Funds: The Role of Fees and Management Companies," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 94(2), pages 243-263, June.
    20. Pablo Durán-Santomil & Luis Otero-González & Renato Heitor Correia-Domingues & Juan Carlos Reboredo, 2019. "Does Sustainability Score Impact Mutual Fund Performance?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-17, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mutual fund flows; Socially responsible investing; Fund names; Fund performance; Turnover; Sustainability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:39:y:2021:i:c:s1544612319313777. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.