Rohstoffbasierte Staatsfonds: Theorie und Empirie

Because of increasing resource prices and thus, higher export profits, resource abundant countries become more and more constrained in implementing a sustainable resource management which realizes two main objectives: The development of competitive non-oil industries and the reduction of resource caused volatility. This paper surveys rationales, structures and effects of resource-based Souvereign Wealth Funds as an instrument of optimal resource management. The main objective is to find out if resource funds have some significant impact on macroeconomic stability and development. Therefore, chapter 2 gives a review of different "resource curse" theories to identify macroeconomic core indicators that should be affected by introducing SWFs. The next chapter introduces the theory of resource-based SWF by simulating a general optimal resource management under different scenarios in an infinite horizon model. It shows that resource funds can be an effective instrument to obtain stabilization as well as sustainability objectives. After discussing specific practical topics as different types of funds, the linkage to government budget and the portfolio management, chapter 4 starts with a descriptive analysis about the implementation of resource funds in three different countries: Norway, Russia and Azerbaijan. Other nations and regions were considered by short subsections. In chapter 5 an unbalanced panel data model with 30 countries from 1970-2006 is build to estimate the effects of resource-based SWF´s on resource curse, stabilization and sustainability by means of fixed and random effects estimator. Finally, a short criticism and outlook gives motivation for further research tasks.