Nice but cautious guys: The cost of responsible investing in the bond markets

The aim of this paper is to measure the cost of investing responsibly for different risk aversion levels by taking the example of green sovereign bond portfolios. We show that for developed markets, the cost of being a nice guy is lower if you are cautious (i.e. a higher level of risk aversion) while this is the contrary for emerging markets. It implies that managers of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) funds should gauge investor’s risk aversion prior to evaluating the “SRI cost”. The SRI cost is zero in some cases.