Sustainable mutual fund performance and flow in the recent years through the COVID-19 pandemic
研究了近年至新冠疫情期间可持续权益共同基金的表现与资金流动，发现高可持续基金年化收益比低可持续基金高1.32%至6.96%，且吸引更多资金流入，尤其在市场崩盘时表现更优。
Sustainable investing has gained significant momentum over the past few years. In this paper, we study the performance and flows of sustainable equity mutual funds in recent years through the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the high-sustainable funds perform better than the low-sustainable ones by between 1.32% and 6.96% annually. This outperformance significantly increases during the COVID-19 pandemic-induced market crash and the post-crash pandemic. Similarly, we find that high-sustainable funds attract significantly more investments (or suffer less outflow) than the low-sustainable funds by between 5.28% and 5.76% per annum. These flow differences increase considerably during the market crash, consistent with the 'flight-to-quality' effect. We also find that the high-sustainable funds attract significantly more investment during the post-crash pandemic than before the crash. This suggests that investors consider sustainable investing a necessity (not a luxury good), and their taste/attitude towards sustainable investing has changed - now they prioritize 'investing with a conscience.'