Relative performance of SRI equity funds: An analysis of European funds using Data Envelopment Analysis

The main aims of this contribution are first to analyse the ethical level of European socially responsible investment (SRI) funds, secondly to measure the overall performance of the European SRI mutual funds with an appropriate data envelopment analysis (DEA) model and, finally, to investigate the relationship between the ethical level of mutual funds and their financial performance. In order to do so, we build an ethical measure, based on the main socially responsible features usually taken into account by SRI mutual funds, which evaluate their ethical strategies. In the time period of economic recession considered in the analysis, the triennium June 2006-June 2009, the mean returns of most mutual funds are negative, preventing the usual DEA models from being applied. In order to overcome this difficulty, we apply a special modification of these DEA models which can be used regardless of the phase of business cycle.performance evaluation; SRI mutual funds; data envelopment analysis.

A credit contagion model for the dynamics of the rating transitions in a SME bank loan portfolio

In this work we analyze the effects of credit contagion on the credit quality of a portfolio of bank loans issued to SMEs. To this aim we start from the discrete time model proposed in Barro and Basso (2005), that considers the counterparty risk generated by the business relations in a network of firms, and we modify it by introducing different rating classes in order to manage the case of firms with different credit qualities. The transitions from a rating class to another occurs when a proxy for the asset value of the firm crosses some rating specific thresholds. We assume that the initial rating transition matrix of the system is known, and compute the thresholds using the probability distribution of the steady state of the model. A wide Monte Carlo simulation analysis is carried out in order to study the dynamic behaviour of the model, and in particular to analyze how the default contagion present in the model affects the output rating transition matrix of the portfolio.

DEA models for ethical and non ethical mutual funds with negative data

This paper tackles the problem of the presence of negative average rates of returns in the evaluation of the performance of mutual funds using a DEA approach. We present some extensions of DEA models for the evaluation of the performance of mutual funds that enable to compute the performance measure also in the presence of negative rates of returns. These extensions regard a model that can be used for investments in mutual funds which have profitability as main objective and two models specifically formulated for ethical mutual funds that include also the ethical objective among the outputs and differ in the way the ethical goal is pursued by investors. The models proposed are applied to the European market of ethical mutual funds. In order to do so, a measure of the ethical level which takes into account the main socially responsible features of each fund is built.

A network of business relations to model counterparty risk

This contribution presents a network of interdependent firms in which the spatial diffusion of the business relations is described by an entropy spatial interaction model. This network is used in a credit risk model in order to take into account the counterparty risk and describe the resulting contagion effects.credit risk contagion, networks, counterparty risk, entropy spatial models

Credit contagion in a network of firms with spatial interaction

In this contribution we carried out a wide simulation analysis in order to study the contagion mechanism induced in a portfolio of bank loans by the presence of business relationships among the positions. To this aim we jointly apply a structural model based on a factor approach extended in order to include the presence of microeconomic relationships that takes into account the counterparty risk, and a network model to describe the business connections among interdependent firms. The network of firms is generated resorting to an entropy spatial interaction model.credit risk, bank loan portfolios, contagion models, entropy spatial models

Performance evaluation of ethical mutual funds in slump periods

In this paper we tackle the problem of the presence of negative average rate of returns in the computation of the performance of ethical mutual funds. The presence of these negative values raises problems both in the computation of the classical performance indicators and in DEA modeling. In this paper we propose a suitably adjusted DEA model which allows the presence of non negative outputs. The model is applied to data on the UK market of ethical mutual funds.Performance evaluation, ethical mutual funds, data envelopment analysis

A three-system approach that integrates DEA, BSC, and AHP for museum evaluation

This paper proposes to measure the museums performance with amodel that combines the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Balanced Scorecard (BSC) methodologies with a third method, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), which is often used to support decision making. Starting from the two-stage DEA–BSC model of Basso et al. (Omega Int J Manag Sci 81:67–84, 2018), which integrates DEA and BSC, we explore the advantages to consider also the AHP methodology, with the aim to include the judgement of some museums’ experts on the relative importance of the BSC perspectives in the performance evaluation model. A first approach uses directly the AHP priorities derived from the judgements expressed by the museums’ experts interviewed to determine the weights to aggregate the four BSC performance scores into an overall performance indicator. A second approach uses the judgments of the museums’ experts indirectly to introduce proper restrictions on the output weights of the second-stage DEA model. With this approach, we overcome the problem arising from the dispersion of the preferences within the group of experts, that may heavily affects the first approach. Both approaches proposed in this contribution are applied to the case study of the municipal museums of Venice

DEA-BSC and Diamond Performance to Support Museum Management

In the present paper, we propose some models for the computation of an overall indicator which measures the performance of a set of museums from a multidimensional point of view. One of the most used methodologies that provide a multiple input–multiple output performance score is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which in recent years has also been applied to museums. Recently, the literature on museums performance has proposed a model that combines DEA with the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach, which is used in the management control of organisations and focuses on a multidimensional framework based on four different dimensions of the organisation management. In the present contribution, we propose a two-stage DEA-BSC model which adopts more plain DEA models without weight restrictions and can be better understood by museums’ managers. In addition, in order to overcome the drawback of the low discriminatory power shown by this model when applied to a few museums, we propose some alternative ways to compute the overall performance at the second stage. One indicator computes the area of a special geometric representation of the efficiency scores obtained at the first stage for the four BSC perspectives and for this reason is named diamond efficiency. Finally, the models proposed are applied to the set of municipal museums of Venice

Analyzing the land and labour productivity of farms producing renewable energy: the Italian case study

The paper computes and analyses some relevant indicators of economic performance of Italian farms producing/not producing renewable energy, and compares the economic results of the two set of farms. The source of data is the European Farm Accountant Data Network; the farms belonging to this network are analysed in relation to their structural differences, type of farming, geographical areas, economic size, as well as the type of renewable energy produced. After an in-depth statistical investigation, the main economic ratios are computed and analysed using also multivariate regression models, with a special focus on the production of solar and biogas energy. In terms of land and labour productivity and fixed factor remuneration, the results show that farms producing renewable energy perform better than the other farms. This positive effect is particularly accentuated in large companies that produce biogas, followed by farms that produce solar energy. There are still many obstacles that limit the production of renewable energy in agriculture; among these, still insufficient research and information on best practices in agriculture and, in Italy, the complexity and dispersion of the institutional legislative framework and of the public support systems. However, the need to increase the production of renewable energy has become a priority for many European countries both in the short- and in the medium term, especially in light of recent events related to the war in Ukraine

Socially responsible mutual funds: An efficiency comparison among the European countries

The first objective of this contribution is to evaluate the performance of SRI equity mutual funds in the main European countries with three different DEA models. Secondly, with a series of statistical tests we compare the performance of SRI and non SRI mutual funds in the various countries, to determine if SRI mutual funds have to sacrifice something in terms of financial performance. Thirdly, we compare the performance obtained by SRI mutual funds among the different European countries