Sovereign wealth funds are designed to solve crucial domestic policy problems. Poorly managed SWFs and SWFs that are managed as tools of economic nationalism or mercantilism will present problems for both the sponsor country and for host countries that receive SWF investment. This article...

As Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) mature and as the literature describing and analyzing SWFs continues to develop, some of the primary concerns that initially animated SWF analysis — namely, SWFs as a sign of shifting financial power, SWFs as potential political actors, and the corresponding...

On March 8, 2014, the West Virginia Legislature approved the creation of a West Virginia “Future Fund,” the latest in a series of North American sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) created in recent decades. Following a model used by other states and provinces, under the West Virginia legislation,...

In 2007, the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Investment in the United States Act (FINSA), the most recent in a series of calibrations to a basic regulatory framework that is now nearly 40 years old. FINSA has particularly significant effects on investment by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and...

This essay, prepared for the Georgetown Journal of International Law's 2009 symposium on sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), considers SWF investment from a novel perspective: How do the external forces acting on sovereign wealth funds and target firms, such as recipient country public sentiment and...

In an era of ascendant globalization, sovereign wealth funds were used by governments around the world—and in particular by governments with massive natural resource wealth or balance-of-trade surpluses—to invest widely in foreign markets. Sovereign wealth funds were products of the...