摘要：The comparison of financial results between different cultural and religious systems is still an open academic debate. There is no consensus among scholars on the existence and magnitude of financial performance differences for companies acting under diverse cultural and religious background. The aim of this paper is to compare the performance of European listed firms applying Shariah principles and those who do not act according to such guidelines. To serve such purpose we have built a sample of companies operating with Shariah-based principles of management and compared the latter with a control comprising companies that do not adopt Shariah parameters over the period 2005–2017. Results suggest that the Shariah-compliant sample performs better than the conventional one. In particular, during the recent recession, Shariah-compliant companies obtained better periodical stock market returns and even in the event of negative returns, losses posted by these companies were lower than those of conventional companies. Moreover, Shariah-compliant sample presents a lower risk-profile than conventional one.
关键词：Islamic Finance; Shariah-compliant stocks; European markets; financial performance; ethical investments
