Ethical and Non-Ethical Italian Funds: a comparison of investment policies, costs and returns

Abstract

This thesis concerns the relationship between financial investments and ethics, focusing the attention on how asset management companies assess the social and environmental consequences of their decisions and how they promote and manage socially responsible investments. The first part of the thesis deals with the generic theory of Italian ethical funds: the definition, the origins, the market's characteristics, the ethical investor's description and the investment selection process. The second part is more practical and concerns the analysis of Italian ethical funds, their investment policies, costs, returns and asset allocation and the comparison with non-ethical Funds considering qualitative and quantitative information.