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provide empirical evidence for it. Moreover, where publicly available information on the sustainability approaches of sustainability funds was incomplete or unclear, we were not able to check with the fund companies to corroborate our assumptions. 6. The sample of sustainability funds in this study was selected to be representative for the Swiss market with regards to sample size (we examined 51 out of 127 funds) and the regional focus. The sample of conventional funds was matched to the sustainability funds (for details see chapter 3.2.1). Therefore, the sample of conventional funds is not representative for all conventional funds. However, the matching guarantees that there is no bias when comparing the sample of conventional funds with the sample of sustainability funds.76 Moreover, the samples of sustainability and conventional funds are sufficiently large to detect relevant differences via the t-tests that we used to identify capital allocation and asset management effects. In terms of the regression analysis examining the influence of sustainability approaches on portfolio impact, the statistical representativity is uncertain. The reasons are the following: Due to the lack of transparency and clarity in the fund documentations, determining the sustainability approaches applied by a fund via desk research was very time-consuming. Therefore, we were only able to include a limited number of sustainability funds applying a specific sustainability approach. As we did not know the total number of sustainability funds applying a certain sustainability approach, we do not know whether we reached the necessary amount of sustainability funds for each approach that would be necessary to reach representativity. However, we did try to include a minimum amount of 10 funds per approach. This was successful apart from the “impact investment” approach. This enabled us to gain an overall impression whether some sustainability approaches consistently improved sustainability impact or not. Concerning the control variables in the regression analysis, our samples were not designed to be representative across benchmark type, concentration or tracking error. We did, however, used them as control variables in case they influenced the dependent impact variables.
4.
Empirical Results
In this chapter, we describe the empirical results of the statistical analyses. For the interpretation of the results, see chapter 6.
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Hypothetically, if the conventional funds sample were representative to the Swiss market of conventional funds but had e.g. 60% regional focus on Europe and we compared it to a sustainability funds sample with only 40% regional focus on Europe, the discrepancy in regional focus might bias the results.
INFRAS | 3 May 2021 | Summary
