Malkiel (1971)

Malkiel, Burton. "Socially Responsible Investing", speech to 1971 Endowment Conference, reprinted in Ellis ed., Classics II:Another Investor's Anthology, Homewood, Illinois: AIMR/BusinessOne Irwin, 1991.

Malkiel reports on a debate at Princeton University over a proposal that it remove from its portfolio stocks of companies doing business in South Africa. The university's financial staff studied the returns of the endowment and reported that the stocks that were to be removed had outperformed the other holdings by an average of 3% per year over an 18-year period.

Argues that screening on the South Africa issue might hurt returns: "Innovative and growth-minded companies will generally want to market their products worldwide. Thus, there may well be a systematic relationship between the expected profitability of an investment and the likelihood that the company will operate in all parts of the world, including southern Africa. To the extent that these corporate characteristics can be expected to affect future returns, altering the composition of the portfolio...might well reduce the yield of the endowment."

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Classics-II-Another-Investors-Anthology/dp/1556233582