The Effects of Corporate Social Responsibility on Equity Fund Returns: Evidence from China

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the fund management companies in China have the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its correlation with the fund performance. The samples are the equity funds between 2004 and 2012. The basis for assessment for the CSR is the Chinese fund company comprehensive assessment report, published by Morningstar Chinese Research Center in Jan 25th 2013. This research uses quantile regression model with three factors to measure the fund management companies with high ranking or low ranking average fund returns and provide investors some basis for investment decisions. The empirical results show the fund management companies with high ranking have better fund returns than those low ranking. Through quantile regression estimations, it is found that the market factors and fund returns have significant correlation with high ranking. The groups with low ranking and high fund returns, the funds performance has a significant positive correlation with the size factors. The group with high ranking and below medium fund returns, the fund performance has a positive relationship with the book to price ratio. Finally, in the fund management companies with extreme CSR ranking, the fund performance has a significant positive correlation with the fund net asset value.

The Impact of Labor Union Influence on Corporate Social Responsibility

“…Whereas the method of least squares results in estimates of the conditional mean of the response variable, given certain values of the predictor variables, quantile regression aims at estimating either the conditional median or other quantiles of the response variable. The quantile regression analysis method for CSR is discussed in previous studies (e.g., [45]). Table 5 shows the results of entire sample at five quantiles.…”