The elephant in the ground: managing oil and sovereign wealth

Vol: 
62/2014
Author name: 
Bremer TVD
Ploeg FVD
Wills S
Year: 
2014
Month: 
October
Abstract: 

Oil exporters typically do not consider below-ground assets when allocating their sovereign wealth fund portfolios, and ignore above-ground assets when extracting oil. We present a unified 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 unhedged 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. We then discuss how the management of Norway’s fund can practically be improved with our analysis.

Publication file: 

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