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The Price of Sin: the Effect of Social Norms on Markets

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Submitted By applejohn710
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The Price of Sin:
The Effects of Social Norms on Markets
Final Project Write-up

Background
Our article describes how “sin stocks” i.e. alcohol, gambling, and tobacco are perennially undervalued because of the market’s unwillingness to purchase them. According to the article this reluctance stems from people not wanting to be associated with these vices. The phenomenon of the market absorbing additional cost to comply with Social Norms is not limited to the Financial Markets as the Becker study from 1957 mirrored this. The study revealed that in America companies were willing to pay a premium to hire white laborers instead of black ones because of social norms. Furthermore the Becker study estimates that companies cost themselves even more money beyond the premium from refusing to interact with minority groups.

The strongest evidence of the market’s ignoring the “sin stocks” is the emergence of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) which has grown into a 2.34 trillion dollar industry, but no market to balance it out has emerged for sin stocks. This is especially puzzling when one considers Geczy, Stambaugh, and Levin (2003) who found that from the perspective of an investor who seeks to create an optimal portfolio from mutual funds, limiting oneself to funds that include social objectives in their investment policies can be very costly. Additionally over 12% of funds in the market undergo some form of screening. In terms of statistical evidence relative to their price to book values sin stocks are significantly undervalued when compared to their comparables. Comparables are defined as hotels, movie theaters, and beverage companies. The gap in value is caused by a number of factors including that a large portion of the investment market is limited in the amount of sin stocks they can buy or they risk public outrage due to their funding

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