The Routledge Handbook of Responsible Investment Is ...

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The Routledge Handbook of Responsible Investment

Tessa Hebb, James P. Hawley, Andreas G. F. Hoepner, Agnes L. Neher,David Wood

Is responsible investment proportionally under-researched?

Publication detailshttps://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203104415.ch3

Andreas G. F. Hoepner, David G. McMillan, Michael FraserPublished online on: 13 Aug 2015

How to cite :- Andreas G. F. Hoepner, David G. McMillan, Michael Fraser. 13 Aug 2015, Isresponsible investment proportionally under-researched? from: The Routledge Handbook of ResponsibleInvestment RoutledgeAccessed on: 18 Oct 2021https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203104415.ch3

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Introduction

We define responsible investment as investment in capital assets based on screening and selection processes or ownership policies, which are not exclusively developed and practiced on the basis of financial information, but are also developed and practiced on the basis of environmental, social or governance (ESG) criteria that account for the investment’s current and future impacts on society and natural environment.1

If the vast majority of the European and Asian investment managers surveyed by Ambacht-sheer (2005) are right, responsible investment2 (RI) may become mainstream investment practice by 2015.3 A strong indicator of responsible investment’s increasing relevance within financial markets is demonstrated by the rapid growth of the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) detailed in Chapter 1 of this volume.

If the responsible investment industry were able to utilize this current momentum and become mainstream investment practice, then many corporations can be expected to substantially react to responsible investors’ joint force and adopt sustainable business practices and technologies (Heinkel et al. 2001). Similarly, governments, of which several (successfully) attempt to trigger such a development by passing legislation in support of responsible investment (Renneboog et al. 2008, Richardson 2008, Solomon et al. 2002), would very likely become increasingly reactive to pro responsible investment lobbying activities in such a scenario.

Therefore, responsible investment’s development into mainstream investment practice, if real-ized, could significantly support global citizens in overcoming major current obstacles and even-tually achieving an effectively ensured form of sustainable development. If this were to happen financial markets would be transformed from a suspected obstacle of (e.g. Haigh and Hazelton 2004, Murray et al. 2006) to a driving force towards sustainable development.4

However, the ability of the responsible investment industry to utilize the current momen-tum and become mainstream investment practice can be expected to depend substantially on responsible investment professionals’ skill in developing and executing the best strategies for the optimization of the ratio of responsible investment’s attractiveness to (conventional) mainstream investment’s attractiveness for (especially institutional) investors. To allow respon-sible investment professionals to develop such strategies, sufficiently reliable information on a

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large number of responsible investment research questions needs to have been produced and communicated.5

Given the substantial growth and promising outlook of the responsible investment industry, it seems intuitive to assume that responsible investment has attracted considerable interest from aca-demics as well as other researchers. Hence it should generate (academic) research output in at least proportional quantity and quality when compared to related research areas with similar struc-tural conditions. However, ‘anecdotal’ evidence suggests the opposite. Skimming through the top finance journals, one hardly ever finds a study on responsible investment, while investigations of hedge funds or private equity appear rather regularly despite both industries being estimated to be only of about half the size of the responsible investment industry (Maslakovic 2008a, 2008b).

Three actions of the PRI support academic research in RI. First, they are the main driver behind the academic responsible investment conference (UNPRI 2008b). Second, they launched the Principles for Responsible Investment Academic Network (PRI AN), which “aims to stimu-late interest in responsible investment research and provide multiple avenues for greater inter-action between academia and practitioners” (PRI AN 2008: 1). Third, they agreed on a joint venture with the “Danish Government to promote academic research on responsible investment” (UNPRI 2009: 1). In 2008 the “first [academic] Responsible Investment Research Conference” was held (UNPRI 2008b: 1), while in the same year the responsible investment professionals met for the nineteenth time at the annual ‘SRI in the Rockies Conference’ (FAFN 2008) and academ-ics in the sister research area of Social and Environmental Accounting held their twentieth annual ‘International Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research’ (CSEAR 2008). The substantial difference between these fields demonstrates a lack of interest in RI by the average researcher.

This chapter suggests that responsible investment is under-researched. As a result, reliable infor-mation on a number of responsible investment research questions is not readily available. This decreases the ability of the responsible investment industry to utilize its current momentum and become mainstream investment practice. This lack of research support is especially problematic in the case of responsible investment, whose development depends on its relative attractiveness to mainstream investment (Bauer and Smeets 2013, Lewis and Mackenzie 2000, Williams 2007).6

Such a problem of proportionally under-researched academic support on responsible invest-ment is not only of concern for the direct supporters of responsible investment, such as the professional responsible investment organizations, the United Nations, and several developed country governments, but also for the indirect beneficiaries of the environmental, social and gov-ernance effects of responsible investment. These indirect beneficiaries can be thought of as any shareholder whose corporate governance efforts are supported by responsible investment (e.g. Barkemeyer et al. 2013, Clark and Hebb 2004, Hawley et al. 2013, Heinkel et al. 2001, Rivoli 2003, Sparkes 2002, Starr 2008).

This chapter investigates whether responsible investment is under-researched relative to its peers in the financial industry. We examine the research outputs of Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) to interrogate the absolute and relative outputs of five peer areas of financial research, responsible investment, hedge funds, private equity, social and environmental accounting and social marketing.

Research method

To address if responsible investment is proportionally under-researched, we contribute to the academic literature by pioneering the development of a generic benchmarking7 approach for research subject area output. This chapter provides a high-level overview of this research, and the

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Andreas G. F. Hoepner et al.

reader can find the precise development of this approach and the underlying literature described in more detail in the online appendix on the author’s website.8

While the literature to date has made substantial contributions in the research output comparison of various primary subjects of investigation, including intuitive ones, such as academic institutions or individual researchers, as well as less intuitive ones, like central banks or conferences, we failed to locate a single study employing research specialisms (a term we define as research subjects, research categories or research areas9) as primary subject of analysis. Roughly a dozen studies have benchmarked research specialisms as their secondary subject of analysis, and their approaches include some fruitful components. But the second-ary nature of their interest in research specialisms prohibits their approaches from being generally applicable or sufficiently unbiased. These studies either developed a case-specific benchmarking approach used only to research specialisms’ development in a specific geo-graphic region or they exposed their methods to substantial biases. For instance, they may employ research quality measures that ignore books and monographs and are based solely on citations, despite citations being highly problematic due to research specialisms’ idiosyn-cratic and inconsistent citation behaviour (e.g. Agarwal and Hoetker 2007, Bensman 2008, Borokhovich et al. 1998, Huang and Chang 2008, Leydesdorff 2008, Nederhof 2006, Pieters and Baumgartner 2002).

However, a generally applicable and sufficiently unbiased approach to benchmark the out-put of a sample of research specialisms appears to be of substantial value for many stakeholder groups, including governments, research funding bodies, universities, R&D-focused corpora-tions, individual researchers and organizations operating in the respective research special-ism’s market. Governments’ interest in the impact of the research they fund has substantially increased over recent decades (e.g. Abramo et al. 2009, Geuna and Martin 2003). Furthermore, empirical studies have found results consistent with the hypotheses that government research funding policies affect research output (e.g. Butler 2003, Groot and García-Valderrama 2006) and that research output affects the knowledge base of organizations (especially those that are geographically close) (e.g. Arundel and Geuna 2004, Sorenson and Fleming 2004). There-fore, governments can be expected to have substantial interest in the ability to benchmark the research output of a sample of research specialisms matched on characteristics such as relevance for society and costs per research unit. This would support them in an attempt to align the annual or aggregated research output levels of similarly relevant research specialisms. Additionally, research funding bodies, universities or industrial corporation’s R&D depart-ments are likely interested in benchmarking the aggregated output of (potential) research specialisms with similar input requirements, market entry barriers and academic or com-mercial potential to gauge the competitiveness within the academic or commercial research specialism’s market, respectively.

In our development of a generally applicable and sufficiently unbiased benchmarking approach (described in detail in our online appendix), we focus on research areas and research categories as opposed to research subjects. With respect to the former two, we overcome previous studies’ biases to a degree, which is sufficient for us to consider the remaining limitations inconsequential for most applications of our benchmarking approach. For instance, we develop adjustments of research output quality-related measures for the influence of books and monographs. We also use the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) rating of 19,537 research journals from any discipline, rather than simply the number of citations. The ARC rates each journal relative to its discipline and aims for an equal journal rating distribution across disciplines. This approach overcomes the bias resulting from different discipline behaviour found when only using citation-based measures of research output quality.

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Aggregated research output

Our first and most important observation from our results on aggregated research output pre-sented in Table 3.1 is that from 1970 to 2008 responsible investment had a lower research output quantity (QUANa) in any estimation specification than any of its peer research areas: hedge funds, private equity, social and environmental accounting and social marketing. Moreover, its lesser research output quantity is statistically significant with respect to all four peer research areas at least at the 5 per cent significance level. Hence, we find responsible investing proportionally under-researched. We do not consider this result to be biased by a potential seniority advantage of hedge fund research or private equity research, since both subject areas had less than 1/150 of their current aggregated research output accumulated at the end of 1969 when our sample period began.

Regarding quality-weighted research output quantity (QLQNa), responsible investment, again, experiences a lower research output against all its peer research areas in any estimation specifica-tion. However, since WoS-based estimation specifications provide comparatively very low values for social and environmental accounting, responsible investment’s underperformance is only sta-tistically significant with respect to the other three peer research areas. Interestingly though, the significance picture changes after adjusting QLQNa for the influence of books and monographs published by each research area. Since we estimate that responsible investment research is least likely to be communicated through books and monographs, our estimation of the amount of responsible investment’s aggregated quality-weighted research output quantity in any publica-tion medium is significantly smaller than the equivalent of any of its peer research areas at a 10 per cent significance level. We carefully interpret this finding as some evidence that responsible investment does not only experience a substantial problem with its aggregated research output in terms of numbers, but also in terms general research strength, which we understand as aggregated quality-weighted research output in any publication medium.

In contrast, responsible investment’s average research output quality (QUALa) is marginally higher than hedge funds’ QUAL and, at least at a 10 per cent level, statistically significantly higher than the equivalent of all three of its peers. Given that hedge funds are least researched by (co-)authors who are affiliated with Australian institutions, and responsible investment is more researched by them than any of its peers except social and environmental accounting, this result, like the ones above, is unlikely to be biased by a potential favouritism of the ARC’s journal rating for journals commonly used by scholars in Australia. In contrast, our adjustment for the influ-ence of books and monographs suggests that bibliometric results based on conventional journal publication databases alone provide a biased account of research performance. For instance, social marketing’s display of the lowest average QUAL appears strongly related to it being the only one of the five research areas whose publications through books and monographs are estimated to be on average of a higher quality than its journal publications, which leads it to have the best, as opposed to the worst, research output quality, if estimated based on any publication’s source (JBMQUAL).

As social and environmental accounting similarly experiences a comparatively good quality in its books and monographs, responsible investment’s JBMQUAL value is somewhat lower than that of its two socially responsible peer research areas. In contrast, RI research outperforms its two asset class peers (statistically significant at the 1 per cent level) in terms of average book and monograph influence on adjusted research output quality, especially since the hedge funds research area appears to comprise many low-quality publications in addition to its main journal articles.

But this information on average aggregated research output quality does not provide us with the opportunity to make valid inferences about a research area’s ability to produce research

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output publishable in the world’s very best journals, which is often considered to be the number one academic performance currency (e.g. Chan et al. 2002) and hence could be an important component of a research area’s ability to stimulate individual researcher interest. Therefore, we investigate each benchmarked research area’s distribution of research outputs over the five main research output quality scores in our analysis. We test significance of the differences in quality score exposure using the same process, which we apply to our aggregated QUALa dataset. The results show that responsible investment’s research output is roughly as often published in a first-tier journal as socially responsible research (for more see the online appendix). But both of its asset class peers’ average ratio of publishing through first-tier journals is more than twice that of responsible investment’s equivalent and is statistically significantly greater at the 1 per cent level.

In contrast, responsible investment, according to both the Scopus and WoS-based estima-tion, is especially good at producing mid-level research outputs, as its ratio of third-tier journal publications is more than 17 per cent higher than any equivalent of its peer research areas (with the differences being statistically significant at least at the 5 per cent level). Hence, we infer that responsible investment might experience difficulties in stimulating the interest of individual finance researchers, since its performance in terms of the important top-tier publications has been highly significantly worse than that of comparable capital asset class research areas, even though we estimate its average research output quality to be proportional. The average output quality appears to mainly result from responsible investment’s substantially lower exposure to research outlets not rated by the ARC, such as many professional, as opposed to academic, journals.

Furthermore, two general observations from Tables 3.1 and 3.2 underline the necessity of multiple data sources and research area definitions, hence the value of our benchmarking approach. First, social and environmental accounting research appears strongly underrepresented

Table 3.1 Aggregated research output estimations (19701–2009)

Research Output Measure

Estimation Specification2

Research Area (a)

Responsible Investment (RI)

Hedge Funds Private Equity Social and Environmental Accounting

Social Marketing

QUANa Narrow (GS) 1,432 4,320 8,960 3,861 2,670

Narrow (Sc.) 126 224 850 333 366

Narrow (WoS) 126 187 946 163 321

Medium (Sc.) 188 252 1,245 503 1,660

Broad (Sc.) 313 378 2,389 731 2,068

Broad (WoS) 227 311 1,542 325 702

Mean logged normalized ratio to RI3 +0.353** +1.933*** +0.735** +1.303**

QLQNa Narrow (Sc.) 68.85 122.10 422.83 173.38 151.28

Narrow (WoS) 70.27 101.43 455.88 72.45 168.90

Medium (Sc.) 106.58 141.13 565.85 253.28 596.20

Broad (Sc.) 165.68 200.68 887.10 350.40 782.08

Broad (WoS) 135.70 178.43 785.89 147.13 367.09

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on WoS. This seems due to WoS’s substantial lack of coverage of second- and third-tier account-ing journals. Second, social marketing is proportionally under-researched because of the scope of its narrow research area definition, which implies a tendency for the social marketing literature to state its common descriptor in a study’s keywords but not in its title.

Mean logged normalized ratio to RI +0.337** +1.758*** +0.530 +1.187**

BMDa 0.7082 0.5695 0.6501 0.6756 0.5827

JBMQLQNa Narrow (Sc.) 97.22 214.40 650.41 256.63 259.62

Narrow (WoS) 99.22 178.10 701.25 107.24 289.86

Medium (Sc.) 150.49 247.81 870.40 374.90 1023.17

Broad (Sc.) 233.95 352.38 1364.56 518.65 1342.17

Broad (WoS) 191.61 313.31 1208.88 217.78 629.98

Mean logged normalized ratio to RI +0.555*** +1.843*** +0.577* +1.382***

QUALa Narrow (Sc.) 0.5464 0.5451 0.4974 0.5206 0.4133

Narrow (WoS) 0.5577 0.5424 0.4819 0.4445 0.5262

Medium (Sc.) 0.5669 0.5600 0.4545 0.5035 0.3591

Broad (Sc.) 0.5293 0.5309 0.3713 0.4793 0.3782

Broad (WoS) 0.5978 0.5737 0.5097 0.4527 0.5229

Mean difference to RI –0.009 –0.097** –0.080* –0.120**

BMFa 0.7371 0.5288 0.6250 0.9225 1.0719

JBMQUALa Narrow (Sc.) 0.4028 0.2882 0.3109 0.4803 0.4430

Narrow (WoS) 0.4111 0.2868 0.3012 0.4101 0.5640

Medium (Sc.) 0.4179 0.2961 0.2841 0.4645 0.3849

Broad (Sc.) 0.3901 0.2807 0.2321 0.4422 0.4054

Broad (WoS) 0.4406 0.3034 0.3186 0.4176 0.5605

Mean difference to RI –0.121*** –0.123*** +0.030 +0.059

% of research outputs of (co)author(s) from Australian institutions

Narrow (Sc.) 8.06% 1.83% 2.56% 10.03% 2.58%

Narrow (WoS) 8.99% 0.80% 1.93% 9.90% 2.05%

Medium (Sc.) 8.11% 2.03% 2.43% 10.48% 6.41%

Broad (Sc.) 6.23% 1.93% 2.10% 10.86% 6.02%

Broad (WoS) 7.82% 1.39% 2.95% 9.35% 5.42%

Notes: 1If we had not restricted our dataset to research published after 1969 with respect to data sources providing reliable publication year information, it would have only covered 28 additional search hits in all 25 Scopus and WoS estimation specifications, of which all but 9 Private Equity hits were published between 1967 and 1969. 2We abbreviate Scopus as Sc. 3In our test of the relative difference between hedge funds’ and responsible investment’s aggregated research output based on equation (11), we excluded the GS-based estimation specification, as it represented an outlier even in its logged form, which is beneficial to Hedge Funds and threatens the robustness of our modified t-test.

Explanation: This table displays the aggregated research output estimations of responsible investment and its four peer research areas. The first column states our measures of research output quantity (QUANa), research output quality and quantity (QLQNa), book and monograph influence adjusted research output quality and quantity (JBMQLQNa), research output quality (QUALa) and book and monograph influence adjusted research output quality (JBMQUALa), which are defined in equations (1), (2), (5), (3) and (7), respectively. It also displays a description of the respective t-test of the relation between a peer research area’s and responsible investment’s research output for each measure. The logged normalized ratio and the difference-based t-test are defined in equations (12) and (11), respectively. Finally, column 1 shows our book and monograph influence divisor (BMDa) and factor (BMFa) defined in equation (4) and (6), respectively, and the percentage of research outputs of (co-)author(s) affiliated with Australian institutions. Column 2 displays the respectively estimation specification, while columns 3–7 display the results. ***, ** and * indicate the 1%, 5% and 10% statistical significance levels, respectively.

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Table 3.2 Distribution of the aggregated research output estimations across research quality scores1 (1970–2009)

Research Quality Score based on ARC (2008) rating

Estimation specification2

Research Area (a)

Responsible Investment (RI)

Hedge Funds Private Equity Social and Environmental Accounting

Social Marketing

Not rated [QUALa = 0]

Narrow (Sc.) 16.67% 27.68% 31.53% 23.12% 28.42%

Narrow (WoS) 17.46% 34.22% 33.40% 34.36% 15.89%

Medium (Sc.) 14.89% 26.59% 35.74% 23.06% 34.88%

Broad (Sc.) 21.73% 28.31% 44.83% 26.81% 31.19%

Broad (WoS) 17.62% 30.55% 31.97% 30.15% 14.96%

Mean difference to RI +11.80%*** +17.82%*** +9.83%** +7.39%

C rated3 [QUALa = 0.25]

Narrow (Sc.) 16.67% 16.12% 11.61% 19.52% 29.23%

Narrow (WoS) 16.67% 18.50% 4.28% 19.02% 27.41%

Medium (Sc.) 15.43% 16.55% 10.32% 21.87% 29.34%

Broad (Sc.) 15.34% 17.20% 12.17% 20.93% 30.61%

Broad (WoS) 11.01% 15.63% 4.82% 22.15% 28.35%

Mean difference to RI +1.78% –6.38%* +5.67%* +13.96%***

B rated [QUALa = 0.675]

Narrow (Sc.) 42.06% 13.88% 18.30% 20.72% 17.76%

Narrow (WoS) 36.51% 7.29% 15.51% 12.88% 23.68%

Medium (Sc.) 43.62% 13.73% 19.44% 21.07% 16.08%

Broad (Sc.) 34.19% 10.84% 20.11% 19.70% 18.57%

Broad (WoS) 34.80% 8.82% 15.76% 17.23% 25.36%

Mean difference to RI –27.32%*** –20.41%*** –19.92%*** –17.95%**

A rated [QUALa = 0.875]

Narrow (Sc.) 19.05% 11.65% 20.98% 25.23% 19.40%

Narrow (WoS) 16.67% 11.42% 21.39% 17.18% 23.68%

Medium (Sc.) 20.21% 10.84% 22.62% 24.85% 14.82%

Broad (Sc.) 20.13% 8.92% 19.58% 23.12% 14.75%

Broad (WoS) 21.15% 13.62% 21.22% 14.46% 23.93%

Mean difference to RI –8.15%*** +1.72% +1.53% –0.13%

A* rated [QUALa = 0.975]

Narrow (Sc.) 5.56% 26.82% 21.43% 11.41% 5.19%

Narrow (WoS) 12.70% 29.39% 24.60% 15.34% 9.03%

Medium (Sc.) 5.85% 23.13% 21.03% 9.15% 4.88%

Broad (Sc.) 8.63% 18.08% 19.84% 9.30% 4.79%

Broad (WoS) 15.42% 29.90% 27.65% 15.08% 7.12%

Mean difference to RI +15.83%*** +13.28%*** +2.42% –3.43%

Notes: 1As ARC rates very few interdisciplinary journals differently in the respective disciplines and their QUALa value therefore represents an average of multiple displayed values, the sum of the displayed percentages for each estimation specification does not always equal 100%. 2We abbreviate Scopus as Sc. 3Even though roughly 50% in ARC’s journal rating are evaluated as C, the percentage of C-rated outputs of all five research areas is substantially lower due to the inclusion of not rated research outputs and especially due to a substantial mismatch between Scopus’s or WoS’s and ARC’s journal coverage, in which the considerable smaller coverage of the former two tends to concentrate on journals rated highly by ARC, and hence causes our datasets retrieved from them to be substantially underexposed to journals rated C by ARC.

Explanation: This table displays the distribution of the aggregated research output estimations across research quality scores for responsible investment and its four peer research areas. The first column displays the five main research quality scores. Each of these is followed by a description of the t-test of a peer research area’s relation to responsible investment regarding it, which is defined equivalently to equation (11). The second column states the respective estimation specifications, and the third to seventh column show the results per research area. ***, ** and * indicate the 1%, 5% and 10% statistical significance levels, respectively.

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Annual research output

Aggregated research output informs us on the current state of overall research support in a research area, and even though it is limited, it remains one of the best possible approximations of knowledge production. However, it does not offer information on the evolution of and current trends in research support. Therefore, we analyzed responsible investment’s annual research sup-port in relation to its four peer research areas by means of observation and statistical analysis of absolute and marginal annual research output.

Initially, we plot the graphs of each research area’s annual accumulation of QUANa and QLQNa values to the end of 2008 (shown in Figures 3.1–3.10).10 The graphs demonstrate that all research areas experienced a similar smooth and somewhat exponential growth pattern. In nearly all esti-mation specifications, in the 30 years leading up to 2000 a research area had not reached 50 per cent of its 2008 research support value. This result suggests a surge in global research output, as well as in WoS’s and Scopus’s coverage due to new information storage, analysis and commu-nication techniques in the twenty-first century. However, the lack of early growth experienced by both responsible investment research and hedge fund research appears relevant. For instance, private equity and social marketing research achieved similar growth levels 10 years earlier than research in responsible investment. In contrast, responsible investment and hedge funds, whose average publication year is somewhat younger than the equivalent of the other three research areas, have experienced stronger growth in the period 2000 to 2008.

In summary, our observations suggests that responsible investment likely experienced under-proportional research support since its early years, which could represent a statistically significant relationship due to the smoothness of nearly all graphs. But responsible investment’s recent research output growth suggests that responsible investment’s annual research output might not be significantly lower than its peers.

Estimation specification

Line shape in figures 1–10 Average publication year

RI HF PE SEA SM

Narrow (Scopus) 2003.8 2005.2 2002.2 2000.7 1999.6

Narrow (WoS) 1999.5 2003.9 1999.4 1999.5 1998.4

Medium (Scopus) 2004.3 2005.3 2002.5 2001.4 2002.8

Broad (Scopus) 2004.1 2005.4 2002.5 2001.2 2002.0

Broad (WoS) 2001.6 2004.5 2000.9 1999.7 2000.6

Explanation: This table represents the legend to Figures 3.1–3.5, as well as 3.6–3.10 below, which display publication year on the x-axis and our measure of research output quantity (QUANa) as well as research output quantity and quality (QUANa) on the y-axis, scaled for the stated research area, respectively. The table above states an estimation specification, its representation in the figures and its average publication year per research area in columns 1–3, respectively. The abbreviations RI, HF, PE, SEA, and SM refer to responsible investment, hedge funds, private equity, social and environmental accounting and social marketing, respectively.

Figures 3.1–3.10 Evolution of aggregated research output estimations over time (1970–2008)

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QUAN (Hedge Funds)

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

19701972197419761978198019821984198619881990199219941996199820002002200420062008

Figure 3.2

QUAN (Social Marketing)

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

19701972197419761978198019821984198619881990199219941996199820002002200420062008

Figure 3.5

QLQN (Responsible Investment)

020406080100120140160180

19701972197419761978198019821984198619881990199219941996199820002002200420062008

Figure 3.6

QLQN (Hedge Funds)

020406080100120140160180200

19701972197419761978198019821984198619881990199219941996199820002002200420062008

Figure 3.7

QLQN (Social Marketing)

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

19701972197419761978198019821984198619881990199219941996199820002002200420062008

Figure 3.10

QLQN (Social & Environmental Accounting)

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

19701972197419761978198019821984198619881990199219941996199820002002200420062008

Figure 3.9

QLQN (Private Equity)

0

100

200300

400

500

600700

800

900

19701972197419761978198019821984198619881990199219941996199820002002200420062008

Figure 3.8

QUAN (Social & Environmental Accounting)

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

19701972197419761978198019821984198619881990199219941996199820002002200420062008

Figure 3.4

QUAN (Private Equity)

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

19701972197419761978198019821984198619881990199219941996199820002002200420062008

Figure 3.3

QUAN (Responsible Investment)

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

19701972197419761978198019821984198619881990199219941996199820002002200420062008

Figure 3.1

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We analyze this suggestion by testing the statistical significance of the differences between responsible investment’s and its four peers’ mean research output quantity, quality-weighted quantity and quality for the full period of completed years (1970–2008) as well as for responsible investment’s weaker years in the twentieth century (1970–99) and its stronger recent phase in the twenty-first century (2000–8). We assign a value of zero to each year without any research out-put in all three performance measures. The results reported in Table 3.3 confirm our hypothesis. While responsible investment’s annual research output quantity is statistically significantly smaller than the equivalent of all its peers, except hedge funds, for the full period and in the twentieth century (all estimation specifications at the 1 per cent level), its twenty-first century performance is in all but one case similarly under-proportional but not consistently at the highest statistical significance level.

In contrast, responsible investment experiences an insignificantly higher research output quan-tity than hedge funds in the twentieth century and only underperforms them in one of five estimation specifications over the full period. But it significantly underperforms them in all but one estimation specification over the last 9 years. With respect to quality-weighed research output quantity, the results are overall very similar, albeit somewhat less statistically significant. Hence, committing to our synthetic statistical safety net against imprecision in our peer selection, we cannot conclude to have found evidence that responsible investment experiences under-proportional annual (quality-weighted) research output quantity. Instead, we carefully conclude that it appears as if responsible investment’s annual (quality-weighted) research output quantity has been comparatively weak, especially in the period between 1970 and 1999.

Responsible investment’s average annual research quality has been significantly higher than hedge funds’ equivalent in some estimation specifications over the full period and in the twen-tieth century, while it has trailed its other three peers in some estimation specifications sig-nificantly over the same time periods. In stark contrast, responsible investment’s average annual research output quality has been consistently higher than all of its peers but hedge funds in the twenty-first century. Especially since its annual average research output quality in the twenty-first century is also in any estimation specification higher than its aggregated average research output quality, these results imply that responsible investment research has improved substantially in recent years not only in terms of (quality-weighted) quantity but similarly in terms of quality. This implication is supported by our observation that in any estimation specification more than 17 per cent of responsible investment’s A* rated papers11 were published in 2008.12

Figures 3.1–3.10 suggest that responsible investment might have experienced a recent period with over-proportional growth rates and hence could potentially settle its (quality-weighted) aggregated research output quantity deficit sometime in the next two decades. This might imply that responsible investment has been able to make up some ground in its relative research support versus its main competitor for investor attention, mainstream investment, against which RI carries an immense research disadvantage.

We investigate these two suggestions by testing the statistical significance of the differences between responsible investment’s average annual growth rate in aggregated (quality-weighted) research output quantity and the equivalent for its four peer research areas. We also test the research category ‘investments’, which comprises both responsible and mainstream investment during our 2000–8 sample period. As ‘investments’ is a very broad research category with a potentially high number of common descriptors, we employ a simple one-term definition and apply it only to our broad research area definition scope. Namely, we consider all research outputs to be part of the ‘investments’ category if they use the term ‘investor(s)’ in their title, abstract or keywords.13 On this basis, we apply all procedures previously described for our five research areas to the research category ‘investments’. Not surprisingly, we find the research category ‘investments’, using our

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Tabl

e 3.

3 Av

erag

e an

nual

res

earc

h ou

tput

est

imat

ions

Rese

arch

O

utpu

t M

easu

re

Estim

atio

n

spec

ifica

tion

Rese

arch

Are

a (a

)

Resp

onsi

ble

Inve

stm

ent

Hed

ge F

unds

Priv

ate

Equi

tySo

cial

and

Env

ironm

enta

l Ac

coun

ting

Soci

al M

arke

ting

1970

– 20

0819

70–

1999

2000

– 20

0819

70–

2008

1970

– 19

9920

00–

2008

1970

– 20

0819

70–

1999

2000

– 20

0819

70–

2008

1970

– 19

9920

00–

2008

1970

– 20

0819

70–

1999

2000

– 20

08

QU

ANa

t,N

arro

w (

Sc.)

3.21

0.53

12.1

15.

44>

0.50

21.8

9>>

20.7

2>>>

6.50

>>>

68.1

1>>>

8.41

>>>

3.40

>>>

25.1

1>>>

9.03

>>>

4.57

>>>

23.8

9>>

Nar

row

(W

oS)

3.21

1.20

9.89

4.49

0.73

17.0

0>23

.79>

>>11

.47>

>>64

.89>

>>4.

15>>

>2.

80>>

>8.

678.

13>>

>4.

60>>

>19

.89>

>>

Med

ium

(Sc

.)4.

690.

6318

.22

6.05

0.53

24.4

430

.46>

>>8.

23>>

>10

4.56

>>>

12.5

9>>>

4.80

>>>

38.5

6>>>

41.4

1>>>

10.3

0>>>

145.

11>>

>

Broa

d (S

c.)

7.79

1.30

29.4

49.

050.

6737

.00>

57.9

7>>>

15.0

0>>>

201.

22>>

>18

.21>

>>7.

13>>

>55

.11>

>>51

.59>

>>16

.97>

>>16

7.00

>>>

Broa

d (W

oS)

5.72

1.60

19.4

47.

460.

9029

.33>

>38

.62>

>>14

.80>

>>11

8.00

>>>

8.26

>>>

3.80

>>>

23.1

1>17

.72>

>>7.

97>>

>50

.22>

>>

QLQ

Na

t,N

arro

w (

Sc.)

1.76

0.20

6.96

2.93

>0.

2511

.89>

10.2

5>>>

3.44

>>>

32.9

4>>>

4.37

>>>

1.89

>>>

12.6

7>>

3.63

>>>

1.69

>>>

10.0

8

Nar

row

(W

oS)

1.78

0.59

5.73

2.41

0.24

9.63

11.3

8>>>

6.13

>>>

28.8

6>>>

1.84

1.20

>>3.

944.

27>>

>2.

35>>

>10

.66>

>>

Med

ium

(Sc

.)2.

660.

2210

.78

3.34

0.28

13.5

313

.62>

>>4.

00>>

>45

.70>

>>6.

32>>

>2.

43>>

>19

.27>

>>14

.63>

>>2.

52>>

>54

.99>

>>

Broa

d (S

c.)

4.14

0.53

16.1

84.

720.

3519

.30

21.6

4>>>

7.04

>>>

70.3

1>>>

8.70

>>>

3.44

>>>

26.2

2>>>

19.3

2>>>

4.57

>>>

68.4

9>>>

Broa

d (W

oS)

3.39

0.84

11.9

14.

210.

29<

<17

.25>

>19

.48>

>>8.

23>>

>56

.98>

>>3.

711.

74>>

10.2

79.

22>>

>4.

14>>

>26

.13>

>>

QU

ALa

t,N

arro

w (

Sc.)

0.26

20.

156

0.61

50.

180

0.05

9<0.

582

0.40

2>>>

0.37

1>>>

0.50

5<<<

0.49

4>>>

0.49

6>>>

0.48

4<<

0.40

2>>

0.39

3>>>

0.43

4<<

<

Nar

row

(W

oS)

0.40

20.

346

0.59

00.

205<

<<

0.09

6<<

<0.

567

0.46

50.

471

0.44

5<<<

0.39

10.

381

0.42

2<<

0.50

4>0.

497>

0.52

7<

Med

ium

(Sc

.)0.

253

0.14

10.

628

0.18

70.

064

0.59

60.

370>

>0.

346>

>>0.

450<

<<0.

483>

>>0.

484>

>>0.

477<

<0.

321

0.29

8>>

0.39

7<<

Broa

d (S

c.)

0.25

70.

169

0.55

00.

174<

0.06

1<0.

552

0.35

0>0.

347>

>>0.

361<

<<0.

473>

>>0.

476>

>>0.

462<

0.31

90.

289>

0.42

1<

Broa

d (W

oS)

0.44

80.

396

0.62

00.

204<

<<

0.08

8<<

<0.

591

0.48

60.

488

0.48

3<<<

0.41

70.

412

0.43

2<<

<0.

512

0.51

00.

518<

<<

Expl

anat

ion:

Thi

s ta

ble

disp

lays

ave

rag

e an

nual

res

earc

h ou

tput

est

imat

ions

for

resp

onsi

ble

inve

stm

ent a

nd it

s fo

ur p

eer

rese

arch

are

as d

urin

g ou

r fu

ll sa

mp

le p

erio

d of

com

ple

ted

year

s (1

970–

2008

) as

wel

l as

in a

twen

tieth

and

twen

ty-fi

rst c

entu

ry s

ub p

erio

d. T

he fi

rst c

olum

n st

ates

the

ave

rag

e of

our

mea

sure

s of

res

earc

h ou

tput

qua

ntity

(Q

UA

Nat

), r

esea

rch

outp

ut q

ualit

y an

d q

uant

ity (

QLQ

Nat

) an

d re

sear

ch o

utp

ut

qua

lity

(QU

AL at

) fo

r ea

ch y

ear

(t),

whi

ch a

re d

efine

d as

ann

ual v

ersi

ons

of e

qua

tions

(1)

, (2)

and

(3)

, res

pec

tivel

y. In

cas

e a

year

did

not

see

a s

ingl

e p

ublic

atio

n of

a r

esea

rch

area

, we

assi

gned

a v

alue

of z

ero

to e

ach

per

form

ance

mea

sure

. The

sec

ond

colu

mn

lists

our

est

imat

ion

spec

ifica

tions

, whi

le t

he t

hird

to s

even

th c

olum

n p

rovi

de t

he r

esul

ts fo

r th

e re

spec

tive

rese

arch

are

a an

d sa

mp

le p

erio

d. A

vera

ge

annu

al

rese

arch

out

put

est

imat

ions

of p

eer

rese

arch

are

as d

isp

laye

d in

ital

ics

in c

olum

ns 4

–7 a

re s

mal

ler

than

the

ir re

spon

sibl

e in

vest

men

t eq

uiva

lent

. >>> ,

>> a

nd > a

s w

ell a

s <<

< , <<

and

< ind

icat

e th

at a

pee

r re

sear

ch

area

’s a

vera

ge

annu

al r

esea

rch

outp

ut is

sig

nific

antly

hig

her

as w

ell a

s lo

wer

tha

n re

spon

sibl

e in

vest

men

t’s

equi

vale

nt a

ccor

ding

to F

ishe

r’s

(192

5) t-

test

defi

ned

in e

qua

tion

14 a

t a 1

%, 5

%, a

nd 1

0% s

tatis

tical

si

gnifi

canc

e le

vel,

resp

ectiv

ely.

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simple one-term definition, to be very large when compared to the five smaller research areas of responsible investment, hedge funds, private equity, social and environmental accounting and social marketing. The Scopus-estimated aggregated research output quantity for ‘investments’ is 17,534, and WoS estimates 11,006 outputs in this broad category, with an aggregated quality-weighted research output quantity of 7,414.12 or 6,628.78, respectively.

Our results displayed in Table 3.4 support the indication that responsible investment research is making up ground against mainstream investment research at least in terms of relative research support, since its (quality-weighted) aggregated research output quantity growth rates are statisti-cally significantly higher than ‘investment’ growth rates in each estimation specification (at least at the 5 per cent level). The research category ‘investments’ comprises both responsible investment and mainstream investment in a categorization according to the variable responsibility of invest-ment. We find that responsible investment’s outperformance of mainstream investment in terms of twenty-first-century growth rates is somewhat stronger.

In contrast, our results do not support the assumption that responsible investment recently experienced a period with over-proportional growth rates, at least following our synthetic sta-tistical safety net against imprecision in our peer selection. While responsible investment’s recent growth rates in (quality-weighted) research output quantity are significantly larger than the equivalent of social and environmental accounting as well as private equity and social marketing in all but two estimation specifications, respectively, hedge fund research displayed (in half of the estimation specification) significantly stronger recent growth rates.

Interestingly, responsible investment is the only research area whose mean twenty-first-century growth rates in quality-weighted aggregated research output quantity is larger than its aggregated

Table 3.4 Average annual growth rates of aggregated research output estimations (2000–8)

Research Output Measure

Estimation specification

Research Area (a) Research Category: InvestmentsResponsible

InvestmentHedge Funds

Private Equity

Social and Environmental Accounting

Social Marketing

∆QUANaNarrow (Sc.) 26.36% 34.49% 17.19% 13.88%<< 11.09%<<

Narrow (WoS) 14.95% 26.14%>> 11.68% 7.60%<< 9.69%<<

Medium (Sc.) 29.28% 35.04% 19.14%< 14.61%<< 20.43%

Broad (Sc.) 25.81% 37.95%>>> 19.69%<< 14.27%<<< 16.60%<< 15.33%<<<

Broad (WoS) 18.69% 30.45%>>> 14.56%< 12.25%<<< 12.53%<<< 13.33%<<

∆QLQNaNarrow (Sc.) 32.28% 36.55% 16.26%<< 13.09%<< 12.10%<<

Narrow (WoS) 16.49% 33.78%>> 10.29%<< 8.01%<< 10.03%<<

Medium (Sc.) 37.36% 36.43% 18.04%< 14.51%<< 25.46%

Broad (Sc.) 29.95% 38.18% 16.66%<< 14.14%<<< 20.92%< 15.37%<<<

Broad (WoS) 20.36% 39.74%>> 13.32%<<< 12.06%<<< 12.54%<<< 13.54%<<<

Explanation: This table displays the average annual growth rates of aggregated research output estimations for responsible investment, its four peer research areas and the research category investments. The first column states two terms, which represent the average annual growth rate in our measures of aggregated research output quantity (QUANa) and research output quality and quantity (QLQNa), which are defined in equations (1) and (2), respectively. The second column lists the estimation specifications, the third to seventh column displays the results for the respective research areas, while the eighth column shows our computations for the research category investments. Average annual growth rates displayed in italics in columns 4–8 are smaller than their responsible investment equivalent. >>>, >> and > as well as <<<, << and < indicate that a peer research area’s average annual growth rate is significantly higher as well as lower than responsible investment’s equivalent according to Fisher’s (1925) t-test at a 1%, 5% and 10% statistical significance level, respectively.

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research output quantity growth rates. This suggests that sustainable research is making progress in both quality and quantity.

We conclude that responsible investment’s recent research support growth rates appear to have been above average, especially in terms of quality-weighted research output quantity, but we find no evidence allowing us to label them over-proportional. However, we present evidence that responsible investment has caught up since the millennium in relative research support against its main competitor, mainstream investment, although the absolute research support disadvantage of responsible investment still widens every year.

Conclusions and implications

We find responsible investment to have experienced significantly lower aggregated research support quantity and aggregated research support strength in the period 1970 to 2008 than its peer research areas with similar research category parents, age and funding potential. We define quality-weighted research output as any publication regardless of medium. Further-more, its annual research support quantity and strength appears substantially weaker than its peers’ equivalent, especially in the twentieth but also in the twenty-first century, even though it has recently shown above-average growth rates not only against its peers but especially against mainstream investment. This proportionally under-researched support of responsible investment may be explained by its under-proportional extrinsic rewards offered to the average individual researcher and especially its over-proportional extrinsic costs required from the average individual researcher, which result from its below-average infrastructure (for more on this point see our online appendix). Regarding research output quality, responsible investment’s aggregated average is comparatively competitive, which appears mainly due to its relatively low exposure to publica-tions in the lowest-quality tier. However, RI research often appears in mid-level as opposed to top-tier publications. In this regard RI research significantly trails its finance peers.

Our empirical results have various implications for responsible investment’s stakeholders. Many governments interested in realizing the potential of responsible investment as mainstream asset management practice (Ambachtsheer 2005) have established legislative frameworks that support RI (see Tenelli, Chapter 31 of this volume, on this point, also Renneboog et al. 2008, Richardson 2008, Richardson 2011). We suggest that these governments should also follow the example of the Danish government and provide research support in order for RI to succeed (UNPRI 2009). This is particularly important given our evidence that while the relative research support gap between responsible and mainstream investment is closing, responsible investment’s absolute research deficit compared to mainstream investment research is immense. The UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) founded its academic network “to stimulate interest in responsible investment research” (PRI AN 2008: 1). One role it might play is to support research journals specializing in responsible investment in order to further improve RI’s research infrastructure, as this appears to be a relevant driver of an average individual researcher’s research area selection process. Professional responsible investment organizations and any interested indi-rect beneficiary of responsible investment could build a case to lobby for a proportional research support of responsible investment research based on our results summarized in this chapter.

Notes

1 Our definition of responsible investment is significantly different from but inspired by the definitions of Kreander, N. (2001) An analysis of european ethical funds, London: ACCA Occasional Research Paper no. 33, SIF (2006) ‘2005 report on socially responsible investing trends in the United States’, online,

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available HTTP: <http://www.socialinvest.org/areas/research/trends/SRI_Trends_Report_2005.pdf>, and Zadek, S., Merme, M. and Samans, R. (2005) ‘Mainstreaming responsible investment’, online, avail-able HTTP: <http://www.weforum.org/pdf/mri.pdf>. We stress that investment in capital assets based on screening and selection processes or ownership policies, which are exclusively developed and prac-ticed on the basis of financial market information and governance criteria, is only included in our defini-tion of responsible investment if the governance criteria account for the investment’s current and future impacts on society and the natural environment. This exclusion of purely governance criteria–based investment is directly in line with the responsible investment definitions of the biggest national and con-tinental professional associations, which estimate their joint market size to be more than $7 trillion assets under management. SIF (2007), ‘Report on socially responsible investing trends in the United States’, online, available HTTP: <http://www.socialinvest.org/resources/pubs/documents/FINALExecSum-mary_2007_SIF_Trends_wlinks.pdf>, Eurosif (2008a) ‘European SRI Study 2008’, online, available HTTP: <http://www.eurosif.org/publications/sri_studies>, SIO (2007), ‘Canadian Socially Respon-sible Investment Review (2006) ‘A comprehensive survey of socially responsible investment in Canada’, online, available HTTP: <http://www.socialinvestment.ca/publications.htm>. Eurosif (2008a) ‘Euro-pean SRI Study 2008’, online, available HTTP: <http://www.eurosif.org/publications/sri_studies> for instance writes that “Corporate Governance risk should be limited [within responsible investment’s ESG-risk integration strategy] to the interface between Governance and Social and Environmental issues.” Furthermore, our definition of capital asset is based on Greer, R.J. (1997) ‘What is an asset class, anyway?’, Journal of Portfolio Management, Winter 1997: 86–91.

2 There are many other sequences of words, most predominantly ‘socially responsible investing/-ment(s)’ (SRI) or ‘ethical investment/-ing’, which are defined as a form of investment considering environ-mental, social, governance or ethical factors. In line with the overwhelming majority of the literature, Sparkes, R. and Cowton, C.J. (2004) ‘The maturing of socially responsible investment: A review of the developing link with the corporate social responsibility’, Journal of Business Ethics, 52(1): 45–57, Kurtz, L. (2005) ‘Answers to four questions’, Journal of Investing, 14(3): 125–139, Renneboog, L., ter Horst, J. and Zhang, C. (2008) ‘Socially responsible investments: institutional aspects, performance, and investor behaviour’, Journal of Banking & Finance, 32(9): 1723–1742, Bauer, R., Koedijk, K.G. and Otten, R. (2005) ‘International evidence on ethical mutual fund performance and investment style’, Journal of Banking & Finance, 29(7): 1751–1767, we consider this to be an issue of heterogeneity in the terminology of one single concept as opposed to an issue of heterogeneity between concepts. In fact, Sandberg, J., Juràvle, C., Hedesström, T.M. and Hamilton, I. (2008) ‘The Heterogeneity of Socially Responsible Investment’, Forthcoming in Journal of Business Ethics recently carried out a content analysis of websites, investment policy documents as well as quarterly and annual reports of 101 European and U.S. institutional inves-tors that signed the UN Principles for Responsible Investment. They find ‘that most investors generally define their SRI practice by emphasising the importance of environmental, social and corporate gov-ernance (ESG) issues (and to a lesser degree ethical issues) in their investment processes’, which they carefully interpret ‘as some agreement when it comes to general definitions of SRI’. For simplicity, we use responsible investment or equivalent terms throughout the text independent of the original wording used by referenced authors.

3 In fact, this prediction of responsible investment being mainstream by 2015 has recently been stated a second time independently of Ambachsheer, J. (2005) ‘SRI: What do investment managers think?’, online, available HTTP: <http://www.merceric.com/referencecontent.jhtml?idContent=1174905> in a responsible investment industry forecast of Radobank’s asset management subsidiary Robeco and the management consultant Booz and Company, Robeco & Booz & Company (2008) ‘Responsible Investing: a Paradigm Shift’, online, available HTTP: <http://www.robeco.com/eng/press/period/pr/2008/10/responsible_investing.jsp>.

4 See, for example, Eurosif ’s (2008b) mission to ‘address sustainability through financial markets’. 5 Reliable well-communicated information produced by (academic) research is inter alia needed on

questions relating to (especially institutional) investor preferences, the financial performance of various responsible investment approaches, responsible investment’s ability to receive (further) support from gov-ernments or its methods for supporting sustainable development. For instance, with respect to responsible investment’s financial performance, Solomon, A., Solomon, J.F. and Suto, M. (2004) ‘Can the UK experi-ence provide lessons for the evolution of SRI in Japan?’, Corporate Governance: An International Review, 12(4): 552–566, suggest that ‘institutional investors are hungry for concrete evidence and, although they are actively pursuing SRI strategies at present, still require as much information on links with [financial] performance as possible’. For an extensive discussion of numerous obstacles, which potentially prevent

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responsible investment from becoming mainstream and hence require to be researched, see Juravle, C. and Lewis, A. (2008) ‘Identifying impedients to SRI in Europe: a review of the practitioner and academic literature’, Business Ethics: A European Review, 17(3): 285–310.

6 To perceive the size of responsible investments’ research support disadvantage burden in relation to (conventional) mainstream investment, consider that when Luther, Matatko and Corner in Luther, R.G., Matatko, J. and Corner, D.C. (1992) ‘The investment performance of UK “ethical” unit trusts’, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 5(4): 57–70, published the first empirical study on respon-sible investment funds’ financial performance in 1992, for instance Markowitz, H.M. (1952) ‘Portfolio selection’, Journal of Finance, 7(1): 77–91, ibid., Hamilton, S., Jo, H. and Statman, M. (1993) ‘Doing well while doing good? The investment performance of socially responsible mutual funds’, Financial Analysts Journal, 49(6): 62–66, portfolio selection without consideration of social, environmental or ethical cri-teria was known for 40 years.

7 Within our academic context, we understand benchmarking not as best-practice benchmarking with the aim to improve the performance of the benchmarking organisation, Camp, R. (1989) Benchmarking: the search for industry best practices that lead to superior performance, Milwaukee: Quality Press, but as closest-peer benchmarking with the aim to measure and explain performance differences of the benchmarked subjects.

8 Online, available HTTP: <http://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/person/dr-andreas-g-f-hoepner>. 9 Merging the terminology employed by Porter, A.L., Cohen, A.S., Roessner, D. and Perreault, M. (2007)

‘Measuring researcher interdisciplinarity’, Scientometrics, 72(1): 117–147, and Borokhovich, K.A., Bricker, R.J. and Simkins, B.J. (1994) ‘Journal communication and influence in financial research’, Journal of Finance, 49(1): 713–25, we define the term ‘research subject’ to describe concepts at the aggregation level of a Web of Knowledge subject category title such as Business Finance, Management or Economics. Research subjects consist in our terminology of many research categories like financial institutions or investment approaches, which themselves represent a group of research areas like hedge fund investment or responsible investment. Our terminological system allows overlaps between individual representations of the defined concepts at each aggregation level. Hence, one research area can belong to more than one research category, and one research category can be part of several research subjects. If we want to refer to research subjects, research categories and research areas, we use the term research specialisms, which we consider to be independent of an aggregation level.

10 We also draw the graphs of each research area’s annual QUALa values. However, as these do not display meaningful trends or other characteristics and are, especially in the twentieth century, considerably erratic, we do not consider them to provide any information value beyond the insights inferable from the QUANa and QLQNa graphs.

11 These papers have been published in Building Research Information, Environment and Planning A, the Journal of Banking and Finance as well as the Journal of Corporate Finance.

12 Unfortunately, a too low absolute number of A*-rated research outputs, especially for responsible invest-ment, prevents us from reliably analysing the research areas’ annual top-tier journal publications.

13 We select ‘investor(s)’ as our one-term definition as opposed to ‘investment(s)’, since the latter is often used in ways unrelated to capital investments as simply an output or a unit, which is expected to lead to a higher future input (e.g. time investment). While we consider our simplistic one-word search term to be reliably applicable using our broad research area definition scope, as we expect the overwhelming majority of papers on investments to use the term ‘investor(s)’ at least in their abstract, we do not suggest a research category definition deliberately limited to one search term to be reliably applicable based on our medium or narrow research area definition scope.

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