Feedback by: Ege Ycel (i6092565)

Feedback for: Lasse Stben

Bachelors Thesis, Major Finance
FEEDBACK: Literature Review and Hypotheses
The literature review and the hypotheses are well formulated, well-structured and wellwritten in general, and the reasoning and theoretical background are explained briefly but
adequately in the paper handed in. However, as always with any paper written anywhere,
there is still some (albeit small) room for improvement in certain areas. Below, positive and
improvable aspects are listed.
Positive aspects:
a. Paper is well-structured and well-written, explanatory and coherent. Grammar is also
near perfect.
b. Both sides of the debates (over/under-performance of SRI funds, etc.) covered in the
paper are given room, and are explained. Empirical evidence from past studies are
mentioned numerous times throughout the literature review.
c. Literature review touches the limitations and criticism of past research and how few
research there is covering the papers research question and how this might be a
limitation
Possible points for improvement:
a. In the final version of the literature review, you can talk about the results in a bit more
numerical way. (e.g. instead of saying that a study finds SRI funds over/underperform
a benchmark, you can mention by how much in % it over/underperforms, this would
make your results more comparable to others)
b. You can be more clear about how you define performance in your hypothesis. You can
specify in them if you will look for nominal returns, or risk-adjusted returns in your
paper, for example.
c. There are not any studies relating to performance of alternative energy EFTs directly
that I could find, but there are several studies relating to alternative energy stock
performances and factors affecting them. As these stocks are the underlying assets in
these EFTs, you might want to have a look at these papers; they might help you make
a more accurate guess of the outcome.
d. If you want to get more accurate or support your thinking about how low oil prices
affect alternative energy EFTs, you can check the paper I found that investigates the
relationship between oil prices -and some other additional factors- and the alternative
energy stocks, underlying your EFTs of interest. The paper is:
Henriques, I., Sadorsky, P. (2007), Oil prices and the stock prices of
alternative energy companies, Energy Economics, vol. 30, issue 3, May 2008,
pp. 998-1010
e. If you wish to elaborate more on the reasons of possible alternative energy EFT
outperformance, you can also talk about the rise of socially responsible technology
firms like Tesla in the high-tech industry.
Article above discusses how the technology sector (through the stock
prices) has an impact on alternative energy sector assets (intuitively, on the
EFTs too)