"In a new paper that will appear in the April 2017 issue of the Journal of Banking and Finance, a top scholarly journal, the authors study over 2,000 funds. They argue that prior studies on SRI or CSR funds are flawed because those studies simply categorized funds as being either socially-responsible or conventional. This categorization leads to too many other differences between funds, and it ignores the fact that firms can have varying degrees of social responsibility.

So, in the new study, they compare low-CSR funds to high-CSR funds. They find that high-CSR funds underperform relative to low-CSR funds. Their evidence is both compelling and robust."

[COMMENTARY] We’ll have to wait til the study is out to truly critique it. Initially, my reaction is how the term ’CSR’ is defined. Are the researchers only concerned with social issues? Even with that, how is it defined? Do the researchers include environmental and governance factors? One thing is for sure, it’ll likely be quite controversial!
Socially Responsible Funds Underperform, by Kenneth A Kim, February 28, 2017, FA Magazine, USA.