Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of socially responsible funds by closely examining funds' investment styles.Design/methodology/approach -The authors apply William Sharpe's method of style analysis to evaluate the performance of 94 US socially responsible mutual funds. By using the fund style as a benchmark, the authors are able to separate the performance attributed to style and selection. Findings -The authors observe that underperformance of socially responsible funds is more pronounced and common than identified in the previous literature. Proponents of socially responsible investing argue that screening process provides an opportunity to fund managers to identify best companies in terms of future financial performance. The paper finds that active management of mutual funds is an important determinant of their performance in socially responsible investing industry. This paper provides evidence supporting that active management of socially responsible funds add value.Originality/value -This study will help investors in allocating their portfolios among many of the available SR funds. The result -actively managed SR funds outperform their passive counterparts -will be valuable for those investors who are willing to invest in socially responsible funds but are concerned about the financial performance.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the market timing and stock selection abilities of socially responsible (SR) mutual funds. Some high-profile SR fund managers try to embrace market timing and security selection plans to add value to the performance. Market timing relies on forecasting the equity market and shifting assets into or out of the market in anticipation of market movements. The selectivity measure assesses fund managers ability to select undervalued securities. Furthermore, the authors examine whether fund characteristics play any role in market timing and security selection ability. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use Treynor and Mazuy's’ (1966) and Henriksson and Mertons’ (1981) model to examine the market timing and security selection ability. The study uses a decade of monthly returns to examine the skills of fund managers in the SR industry for the period from July 2002 to June 2012. Findings – The main findings are that the managers – though not very successful – do indulge in stock selection and market timing activities. It was found that 48 funds have positive statistically significant stock selectivity coefficients and only a very small number of five funds with positive statistically significant market timing coefficients. Results suggest that there is a trade-off between the two activities. It was found that aggressive funds, funds with higher growth rate and riskier funds are more likely to engage in market timing rather than stock selection. Practical implications – The implication is that SR managers cannot achieve superior stock selection and market timing ability simultaneously. Risk-averting investors in SR funds expect SR behavior from the managers. This means that managers of SR funds, with very little evidence of market timing ability, may have to refrain from market timing of SR funds. Originality/value – Using a Morningstar dataset comprising almost all SR funds in existence as of June 2012, this is probably the most exhaustive long-term study to date on market timing and stock selection abilities of SR fund managers.

Background: The aim of the study was to retrospectively evaluate the outcome of medical management of postoperative discitis (POD). Materials and Methods: A total of 31 patients treated for POD were included in the study. Clinical, radiological, and laboratory data of all patients were collected and evaluated. All patients were treated initially with bed rest and antibiotic therapy after radiological diagnosis. Surgical management was undertaken after failure of 4 weeks of conservative management. All cases were followed clinically with laboratory and radiological investigations. Results: Five cases failed to respond to medical management and were treated surgically with debridement and transpedicular fixation. All patients showed clinical recovery till the last follow-up. Conclusion: Early diagnosis and proper management are the keys to successful outcome of postoperative spndylodiscitis. Surgical debridement and fusion are required when conservative treatment fails.

This article examines whether and how the corporate governance practices of firms affect foreign investors' decisions to invest in their firms. Using a comprehensive data set of foreign equity holdings of mutual funds from 37 countries worldwide, we find that fund managers tend to tilt their portfolio weights towards firms with strong governance systems. Particularly, they invest more in foreign firms with good board characteristics and independent auditors. This result suggests that mutual funds, facing informational disadvantage in their foreign investments, prefer firms with better governance systems as a substitute for their own costly information acquisition and monitoring activities. Furthermore, firms with better governance structures attract more foreign investments irrespective of their country-level investor protection environments.

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