db653ac878bc73a767db14f23131b779 sustainability-17-04594.pdf 832fa1f4992da1ded9a47feebb685a0da0e2ccf1 sustainability-17-04594.pdf 3a7adf824e4a7be61c37e69796be6e7ed17b195fdf46218c0d00bc1c67f514bd sustainability-17-04594.pdf Title: Environmental Innovation and the Performance of Healthcare Mutual Funds Under Economic Stress Subject: Modern healthcare generates significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and waste, which pollute the global environment and damage human health. Healthcare firms could reduce these environmental emissions and waste by developing environmentally friendly technologies and production processes. However, the implementation of green innovations requires significant investments. Healthcare equity mutual funds could provide them financial resources whether this allows fund managers to comply with their fiduciary duties. Previous literature has examined the financial performance of healthcare mutual funds without considering the environmental practices that investees adopt. To understand this issue, we examined the effect of investees’ environmental business practices on healthcare fund financial performance by considering different states of the economy. To this end, we obtained a sample of 148 global healthcare equity mutual funds from December 2015 to December 2022. Adopting the Fama–French model, our findings indicate that mutual funds improve financial performance when investee firms are in the initial phase of greening their processes and activities. However, the mutual funds invested in healthcare firms with advanced environmental practices achieve risk-adjusted returns similar to those invested in healthcare firms that implement conventional business management strategies. Furthermore, the financial performance of healthcare mutual funds is not significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis at the aggregate level. Therefore, adopting environmental practices in the healthcare sector will not result in a loss of investor wealth from 2016 to 2022. Keywords: healthcare mutual fund; financial performance; efficient resource use; environmental emission; environmental innovation; COVID-19 pandemic crisis Author: Carmen-Pilar Martí-Ballester Creator: LaTeX with hyperref Producer: pdfTeX-1.40.25 CreationDate: Sat May 17 09:53:30 2025 CEST ModDate: Sat May 17 09:56:23 2025 CEST Custom Metadata: no Metadata Stream: no Tagged: no UserProperties: no Suspects: no Form: none JavaScript: no Pages: 20 Encrypted: no Page size: 595.276 x 841.89 pts (A4) Page rot: 0 File size: 287876 bytes Optimized: no PDF version: 1.7 name type encoding emb sub uni object ID ------------------------------------ ----------------- ---------------- --- --- --- --------- MIKRSI+VnURWPalladioL Type 1 Custom yes yes yes 10 0 BCQTWA+URWPalladioL-Roma Type 1 Custom yes yes yes 16 0 SXOOAG+URWPalladioL-Bold Type 1 Custom yes yes yes 22 0 XHECJR+URWPalladioL-Ital Type 1 Custom yes yes yes 27 0 FXXUVH+CMSY10 Type 1 Builtin yes yes yes 62 0 DAGTHM+PazoMath-Italic Type 1 Builtin yes yes yes 70 0 RFLZJB+CMR10 Type 1 Builtin yes yes yes 75 0 ULZEWH+MSBM10 Type 1 Builtin yes yes yes 83 0 VUVJZQ+URWPalladioL-BoldItal Type 1 Custom yes yes yes 94 0 Jhove (Rel. 1.28.0, 2023-05-18) Date: 2025-05-28 02:09:28 CEST RepresentationInformation: sustainability-17-04594.pdf ReportingModule: PDF-hul, Rel. 1.12.4 (2023-03-16) LastModified: 2025-05-27 03:29:08 CEST Size: 287876 Format: PDF Version: 1.7 Status: Well-Formed and valid SignatureMatches: PDF-hul MIMEtype: application/pdf PDFMetadata: Objects: 319 FreeObjects: 1 IncrementalUpdates: 0 DocumentCatalog: PageLayout: SinglePage PageMode: UseNone Outlines: Item: Title: Introduction Destination: section.1 Item: Title: Literature Review and Hypotheses Development Destination: section.2 Item: Title: Research Method Destination: section.3 Children: Item: Title: Sample Destination: subsection.3.1 Item: Title: Methodology Destination: subsection.3.2 Children: Item: Title: The Effect of the Investee’s Environmental Practices on Healthcare Fund Financial Performance Destination: subsubsection.3.2.1 Item: Title: The Effect of the COVID-19 Health Crisis on Healthcare Mutual Fund Financial Performance by the Investee’s Environmental Practices Destination: subsubsection.3.2.2 Item: Title: Results Destination: section.4 Children: Item: Title: Results for the Effect of Fund Environmental Scores on Healthcare Fund Financial Performance Destination: subsection.4.1 Item: Title: Results for the Effect of the COVID-19 Health Crisis on Healthcare Mutual Fund Financial Performance by Investees’ Environmental Practices Destination: subsection.4.2 Item: Title: Discussion Destination: section.5 Item: Title: Conclusions Destination: section.6 Item: Title: References Destination: section.7 Info: Title: Environmental Innovation and the Performance of Healthcare Mutual Funds Under Economic Stress Author: Carmen-Pilar Martí-Ballester Subject: Modern healthcare generates significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and waste, which pollute the global environment and damage human health. Healthcare firms could reduce these environmental emissions and waste by developing environmentally friendly technologies and production processes. However, the implementation of green innovations requires significant investments. Healthcare equity mutual funds could provide them financial resources whether this allows fund managers to comply with their fiduciary duties. Previous literature has examined the financial performance of healthcare mutual funds without considering the environmental practices that investees adopt. To understand this issue, we examined the effect of investees’ environmental business practices on healthcare fund financial performance by considering different states of the economy. To this end, we obtained a sample of 148 global healthcare equity mutual funds from December 2015 to December 2022. Adopting the Fama French model, our findings indicate that mutual funds improve financial performance when investee firms are in the initial phase of greening their processes and activities. However, the mutual funds invested in healthcare firms with advanced environmental practices achieve risk-adjusted returns similar to those invested in healthcare firms that implement conventional business management strategies. Furthermore, the financial performance of healthcare mutual funds is not significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis at the aggregate level. Therefore, adopting environmental practices in the healthcare sector will not result in a loss of investor wealth from 2016 to 2022. 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