Sovereign Wealth Funds: Stylized Facts about their Determinants and Governance

Concerns about the implications of foreign investments by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) stem in large part from apprehensions about the objectives and governance quality of these institutions. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the stylized facts of SWFs by providing a statistical analysis of a range of characteristics of SWFs, including the motivation for their establishment as well as their size, governance and effect on reserve management behaviour. Specifically, it estimates what factors foster the establishment of SWFs as well as affect their size. It also investigates the extent to which the governance and transparency of individual SWFs correlate with domestic and global governance practices. Lastly, it analyses how asset accumulation by SWFs may affect central bank holdings of official reserves.