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The Elephant In The Ground: Managing Oil And Sovereign Wealth

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  • van den Bremer, Ton
  • van der Ploeg, Frederick
  • Wills, Samuel

Abstract

One of the most important developments in international finance and resource economics in the past twenty years is the rapid and widespread emergence of the $6 trillion sovereign wealth fund industry. Oil exporters typically ignore below-ground assets when allocating these funds, and ignore above-ground assets when extracting oil. We present a unified stylized framework for considering both. Subsoil oil should alter a fund’s portfolio through additional leverage and hedging. First-best spending should be a share of total wealth, and any unhedgeable volatility must be managed by precautionary savings. If oil prices are pro-cyclical, oil should be extracted faster than the Hotelling rule to generate a risk premium on oil wealth. Finally, we discuss how our analysis could improve the management of Norway’s fund in practice.

Suggested Citation

  • van den Bremer, Ton & van der Ploeg, Frederick & Wills, Samuel, 2016. "The Elephant In The Ground: Managing Oil And Sovereign Wealth," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 113-131.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:82:y:2016:i:c:p:113-131
    DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2015.10.005
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sovereign wealth fund; Leverage; Hedging; Oil extraction; Prudence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • F65 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization - - - Finance
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • Q32 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Exhaustible Resources and Economic Development
    • Q33 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Resource Booms (Dutch Disease)

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