https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3773879
Abstract
Ethical-factor investing shall be defined as using ethics, such as an enterprise’s policies regarding social/economic/health/environmental justice, sustainability, climate change, or corporate governance, as a factor to determine whether to acquire, dispose of, or how to exercise ownership rights in an equity or debt interest in a business enterprise.
Ethical-factor investing includes, but is not limited to the ESG, sustainable, socially responsible, impact, and faith-based investing. Ethical-factor investing may. but need not, be intended to enhance the investor’s financial performance. Ethical-factor investing also may, but need not, be intended to enhance an enterprise’s ethical behavior, i.e., to be socially beneficial.
The Trump administration discouraged ethical-factor investing. Nevertheless, such investing is becoming increasingly popular among Americans, American mutual funds, and American retirement plans.
The article introduces the current types of ethical investing, their history, their financial and ethical performance, and their pre-Biblical progenitors. All those issues are discussed more extensively in a longer referenced article.
This article suggests how the Biden Administration may encourage ethical-factor investing by ERISA retirement plan fiduciaries. This may be done with revised ERISA regulations and other interpretative documents. No ERISA amendments would be needed. ERISA permits such investing if it does not adversely affect the expected financial performance of such plans’ investment portfolios or investment choices. Finally, such plans investors, including plan participants and beneficiaries, may thereby generate their preferred benefits for society. Such benefits are, like desired financial benefits, most likely to be achieved if such investors are explicit about their preferred benefits and they regularly monitor the performance of their investments.
