The Influence of Ethics on Investment Performance : A comparative study of Swedish national pension funds and Swedish private investment funds

Abstract: Previous research found Swedish national pension funds to perform worse than the market average. This study finds that, contradictory to previous research, the AP-funds per-form better than the market. This study also finds that ethical fund management increases the stability of a fund’s performance over time but can also limit the fund’s success in shorter time frames. The study utilizes the sustainability rating released by Morningstar Inc., and negative and positive screening practises of the sampled funds, as well as the risk adjusted performance measures Sharpe, and Treynor ratios, in order to investigate the relation between ethics and performance, in a comparison of Swedish national pension funds and Swedish private investment funds.