Commentary
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable
Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds
in Saudi Arabia
Nader AlKathiri
July 2020
2
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
The study, Optimal Policies for Managing Oil Revenue Stabilization
Funds: An illustration using Saudi Arabia, conducted by researchers
from KAPSARC, was recently published in the journal Resources Policy
(AlKathiri et al. 2020). It developed a model that optimizes the buildup and
drawdown of a stabilization fund. It offers key insights into managing a
stabilization fund to support scal stability over the short and medium term.
Its results indicate that the boundary between an oil-revenue stabilization
fund and a sovereign wealth fund is not a bright line. This commentary
extends the paper’s analysis by exploring the potential role of sovereign
funds, both short-term stabilization and long-term savings funds, in
achieving scal stability and sustainable development in Saudi Arabia.
The macroeconomic challenges of managing oil windfalls
Oil-dependent economies are exposed to various issues that can limit
their growth and development. There are three major problems associated
with a heavy reliance on oil revenues. First, oil provides uncertain revenue
streams due to oil price uctuations in the global market. Second, it is a
non-renewable resource that is constantly being depleted. Third, the oil
industry is capital-intensive and creates fewer jobs compared with other
industries.
Different tools can help to mitigate these issues, and each tool serves
different objectives, as depicted in Figure 1. Oil revenue stabilization
funds address the issue of oil revenue volatility by stabilizing government
expenditure in the face of oil price uctuations. Sovereign wealth funds
(SWFs) (savings funds) address the risk posed by the depletion of oil
by generating a sustainable source of income to replace the depleted
resource’s revenues. Other objectives of these funds include improving
intergenerational equity and isolating the economy from the adverse
macroeconomic effects associated with the dependence on oil revenues.
While these funds can be sufcient for developed oil-exporting countries
(e.g., Norway), they are insufcient for most developing countries with high
population growth because they do not directly generate jobs in the local
economy. Finally, economic diversication decouples the economy from
oil dependence in the long run and, therefore, reduces revenue volatility.
It helps to establish non-oil industries that can remain after resource
depletion and creates more jobs to absorb the growing working-age
population.
The boundary between
an oil-revenue
stabilization fund and
a sovereign wealth
fund is not a bright line
Figure 1. A simplistic illustration of how stabilization funds, SWFs, and economic diversication address the problems
associated with oil dependence.
Source: KAPSARC 2020.
Oil-dependent economy
Volatile revenues
Depletable resource
Creates few jobs Economic diversification
Sovereign wealth funds
Oil revenue stabilization
funds
3
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
Oil-exporting
countries establish
oil revenue
stabilization funds as
a buffer against price
uctuations
The short-term view: Addressing the volatility of oil revenues
To mitigate the impact of volatile revenues on scal budgets, oil-exporting
countries establish oil revenue stabilization funds as a buffer against price
uctuations. Stabilization funds aim to smooth consumption over time
by making it less correlated with oil revenues and less disruptive to the
investment climate. Unlike SWFs (i.e., savings funds), where the focus
is on generating sustainable streams of income that can replace lost oil
revenues after resource depletion, stabilization funds provide only short-
term scal stabilization. Some countries use one fund for both stabilization
and savings purposes, while others have separate funds with their own
objectives and mandates.
The key question for managing a stabilization fund is how much to save
during oil boom cycles and how much to withdraw from it when prices
are low. These decisions imply a tradeoff between current and future
consumption and depend on several factors, including future oil revenue
expectations, the size of the fund, and the ability of the country to borrow
in downturns to nance its scal budget. Successfully stabilizing the
scal budget is not contingent on the existence of a stabilization fund.
In fact, many countries, such as Iran, and Venezuela, failed to achieve
macroeconomic stabilization despite their formal establishment of
stabilization funds (Bauer 2017). In contrast, Saudi Arabia and Chile use
their reserves or funds to stabilize expenditure by adopting countercyclical
scal policies. Figure 2 shows the co-movement of government expenditure
and revenue growth for four resource-rich countries.
Figure 2. Government expenditure and revenue growth for four resource-exporting countries.
-60%
-40%
-20%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
-15.0%
-10.0%
-5.0%
0.0%
5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Saudi Arabia
Total government revenue growth Total government expenditures growth
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Norway
Total government revenue growth Total government expenditures growth
Total government revenue growth Total government expenditures growth
Total government revenue growth Total government expenditures growth
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Azerbaijan
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Chile
2014 2015 2016 2017
2015 2016 2017 2018
-20%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
-20%
-10%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
4
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
Although some people refer to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority’s
(SAMA’s) foreign reserves as an SWF, it is actually more a foreign
exchange reserve, the goal of which is to protect the stability of the
Saudi riyal’s currency peg to the United States dollar (US$). Reserves
accumulated as a result of measures taken to ensure the currency peg
are referred to as de-facto sovereign wealth funds, as explained in Wills
and van der Ploeg (2014). According to Venables and Wills (2016), the
difference between an SWF and a foreign exchange reserve is that the
former accumulates oil revenues as foreign assets before they enter
the domestic economy, while the latter accumulates foreign reserves
after oil revenues have been spent domestically. Part of SAMA’s foreign
reserves has not been spent and is considered pure oil revenue savings.
Specically, the deposits and reserves of the government (Table 2), which
represents 34% of SAMA’s foreign reserves, is under the direct control
of the government for budget nancing. The government saves budget
surpluses in this account, part of which can be allocated to the Public
Investment Fund (PIF), which is Saudi Arabia’s ofcial SWF, or other
development and pension funds.
The key question
for managing a
stabilization fund is
how much to save
during oil boom
cycles and how much
to withdraw from it
when prices are low
-60%
-40%
-20%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
-15.0%
-10.0%
-5.0%
0.0%
5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Saudi Arabia
Total government revenue growth Total government expenditures growth
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Norway
Total government revenue growth Total government expenditures growth
Total government revenue growth Total government expenditures growth
Total government revenue growth Total government expenditures growth
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Azerbaijan
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Chile
2014 2015 2016 2017
2015 2016 2017 2018
-20%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
-20%
-10%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
Sources: SAMA; Statistics Norway; Banco Central De Chile; The State Committee of Republic of Azerbaijan.
5
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
As illustrated in Figure 2, Saudi Arabia was able to decouple government
spending from uctuating oil revenues by using the government’s reserves
held by SAMA as a buffer against oil price shocks. In AlKathiri et al. (2020),
we developed a model for managing oil revenue stabilization funds to
maximize the welfare of households by creating tradeoffs between current
and future consumption. The derived savings rule from the model matches
what we would expect: the larger the fund, the smaller the additions during
periods of high revenues and the bigger the withdrawals during periods of
low revenues. By applying the model to the observed revenues of Saudi
Arabia from 2003-2015, we estimate the optimal savings in each year
as a function of oil revenue and the size of the fund, and we compare
the outcome with what has been observed historically. We show that the
pattern of the buildup and drawdown of the government’s reserves closely
matches the optimal savings rule derived by the model until 2011, where
actual savings started to deviate from the optimal path as a result of the
rapid increase in government spending. Our ex-post analysis shows that
applying the optimal policy from 2003 until 2015 would have achieved the
same welfare outcome as what was actually achieved, but with a fund
size US$115 billion larger. This shows the importance of smoothing public
spending over time.
Saudi Arabia was
able to decouple
government spending
from uctuating oil
revenues by using
the governments
reserves held by
SAMA as a buffer
against oil price
shocks
Table 1. SAMA assets.
Table 2. SAMA liabilities.
Source: SAMA (2017).
Source: SAMA (2017).
Foreign
currencies and
gold
Cash in vault Deposits with
banks abroad
Investments
in foreign
securities
Other assets Total
2017
(in billion US$) 61.12 6.88 100.79 331.91 6.94 5 0 7.6 4
Percentage 12% 1.4% 19.9% 65.4% 1.4% 100%
Currency
issued
Govt.
deposits
and
reserves
Govt.
institution
deposits
Regulatory
deposits
for
nancial
institutions
Foreign
institution
deposits
in local
currency
SAMA
bills and
repurchase
agreements
Other
liabilities
Total
2017
(in billion
US$)
61.12 171.03 23.56 26.01 4.93 37.01 183.99 5 0 7.6 4
Percentage 12% 33.7% 4.6% 5.1% 1% 7.3% 36.2% 100%
6
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
The investment strategy for stabilization funds and the role of debt
nancing
Stabilization funds’ assets have to be liquid enough and readily available
to meet their objectives of protecting their respective economies from
scal instability. The proper management of these funds is crucial for their
success in mitigating macroeconomic volatility, and they require integrating
with alternative sources of nancing scal decits. While budget decits
can be covered through debt-nancing, the availability of a stabilization
fund provides a strong balance sheet that can give negotiation power to
the government when it attempts to reduce the cost of its debt. Hence,
the decision as to whether to issue government bonds or withdraw from
the stabilization fund will be based on the opportunity cost of withdrawing
from the fund. Debt should not be issued if its cost exceeds the return on
the corresponding amount in the stabilization fund. Some poorly managed
funds have no clear goals and their operations do not make economic
sense. For example, some governments save resource revenues in funds
yielding low returns and issue debt at rates of interest that are higher than
the yields they receive (Venables and Wills 2016).
The assets of a stabilization fund can be divided into sequential tranches,
with each tranche tapped after the depletion of the preceding tranche. The
choice of investment for each tranche will differ based on the estimate of
the time it will take to start withdrawing from each tranche. Following the
work of AlKathiri et al. (2020), Figure 3 divides a stabilization fund of $450
billion into six tranches, with $75 billion in each, to illustrate how different
tranches could be managed. As the graph shows, the rst tranche will most
likely be needed to nance the budget shortfall immediately and, therefore,
should be kept in the form of cash or assets that are very easy to liquidate.
Stabilization funds’
assets have to be
liquid enough and
readily available to
meet their objectives
of protecting
their respective
economies from
scal instability
Figure 3. Probability distribution of the rst time each tranche is tapped.
Source: AlKathiri et al. (2020).
450
375
300
225
150
75
Billion US$
Probability
Tranche 1
Tranche 2
Tranche 3
Tranche 4
Tranche 5
Tranche 6
Short-term liquid
assets with low
returns
Long-term assets
with higher
returns
2
0.2
0.2
0.4
0.4
0.6
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.0
0.5
1.0
4 6 8 10 12 14
Years
16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
7
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
Another major
issue confronting
oil-dependent
economies is the
exhaustibility of the
resource
Figure 4. The composition of wealth.
Source: World Bank (2018).
On the other hand, subsequent tranches have longer timeframes and can
be invested in longer-term bonds or assets with higher returns. The last
two tranches begin to resemble the kinds of assets appropriate for an SWF,
where the underlying assets should never be withdrawn and should be
invested in long-term investments with higher returns.
The long-term view: Transforming oil revenues into sustainable
sources of income
Another major issue confronting oil-dependent economies is the
exhaustibility of the resource. Specically, how should they prepare to
replace oil revenues as the resource depletes? Before addressing this
issue, it is important to understand what constitutes the wealth of a nation.
The World Bank (2018) provides estimates of “comprehensive wealth” for
141 countries and denes it as the sum of produced capital, natural capital,
human capital, and net foreign assets. Therefore, the wealth of a country is
its cumulative stock of assets. On the other hand, gross domestic product
(GDP) is a ow measure of income derived from the stock of wealth. A
country can boost its GDP by depleting its wealth (Hamilton and Hepburn
2014), thus nancing unsustainable consumption at the expense of future
generations. As Figure 4 illustrates, human capital is the most important
component of wealth, as it represents the largest share of wealth in all
income groups, except the low-income group, where natural capital
dominates. As countries transition from low- to medium- and high-income
countries, the share of natural capital declines, whereas the shares of both
produced and human capital increase (World Bank 2018).
-2%
-3%
6%
-1%
14%
25%
25%
22%
28%
27%
47%
27%
17%
30%
3%
9%
41%
51%
58%
42%
70%
64%
-5% 15% 35% 55% 75% 95%
Low income
Lower middle income
Upper middle income
High income: non-OECD
High income: OECD
World
Net foreign assets Produced capital Natural capital Human capital
8
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
How can oil wealth be efciently transformed into other types of wealth?
Hartwick’s rule (Hartwick 1977) suggests that resource rent should be
invested in other forms of productive capital to offset falling stocks of
non-renewable resources. If the revenue generated by the depletion of
non-renewable resources is used to nance extra consumption, wealth
will decline, and nancing this level of additional consumption is difcult to
sustain.
Traditional SWFs invest externally and therefore transform oil wealth
into foreign assets. The main objective of these funds is to protect the
economy from macroeconomic instability, such as revenue volatility
and real exchange rate appreciation, and to promote intergenerational
equity. The most successful fund of this kind cited in the literature is the
Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG). Its functions include
both budget-stabilization and savings, with an implicit focus on protecting
the economy from the so-called ‘Dutch disease’ (Alsweilem and Rietveld
2017). Norway transfers all its resource revenues to the fund and limits
its structural non-oil decit to 4% of the fund, which can be nanced by
drawing down the fund. The disadvantages of these traditional SWFs are
their minimal contribution to the development of the domestic economy
and their inability to generate jobs for citizens. In fact, resource rents are
just being transformed into nancial rents without any improvement in the
productive base of the economy.
Other SWFs have domestic development objectives and invest in their local
economies, transforming oil wealth into produced capital and, potentially,
human capital. In contrast to foreign investments, an SWF’s domestic
investments support the development of non-oil sectors that generate jobs
for the local population. Creating jobs for the growing youth population
in Saudi Arabia is critical, since a large number of younger citizens are
expected to enter the labor force in the next few years. Figure 5 illustrates
the implications of using oil wealth to nance current consumption, invest
in foreign assets, or invest in the domestic economy for the size and
composition of future wealth.
How can oil wealth
be efciently
transformed into
other types of
wealth?
The disadvantages
of these traditional
SWFs are their
minimal contribution
to the development
of the domestic
economy and their
inability to generate
jobs for citizens
Figure 5. A simplistic illustration of the implication of using oil wealth to nance current consumption, invest in foreign
assets, or invest in the domestic economy on the size and composition of future wealth.
Source: KAPSARC 2020.
CURRENT FUTURE
TOTAL WEALTH
CURRENT
Natural capital Produced capital Human capital Net foreign assets
FUTURE
TOTAL WEALTH
CURRENT FUTURE
TOTAL WEALTH
Depleting oil wealth to finance
consumption
Transforming oil wealth
into foreign assets
Transforming oil wealth into produced
and human capital
9
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
The PIF’s strategy is
to invest domestically
and internationally
to enable economic
diversication
and growth in key
strategic sectors
An SWF should not
replicate the role of
the scal budget or
nancial institutions
and should seek
investments that
crowd-in rather than
crowd-out private
sector investments
Figure 6. The allocation of domestic investment among the government, private sector, and SWF.
The PIF’s strategy is to invest domestically and internationally to enable
economic diversication and growth in key strategic sectors. Its four
primary objectives include: 1) growing its assets to US$400 billion by 2020,
which it expects to generate an annual return of 4%-5%; 2) unlocking new
sectors in the economy; 3) building strategic partnerships; and 4) localizing
cutting-edge technology and knowledge. It also contributes indirectly to 28
Saudi Vision 2030 objectives beyond those with which it is tasked. PIF’s
domestic capital expenditure is not part of the government’s scal budget.
For example, budgeted government expenditure for 2018 is US$260.8
billion, of which US$54.7 billion is capital expenditure. On top of that, the
spending estimates of PIF and the National Development Fund (NDF) are
roughly US$22.1 and US$13.3 billion, respectively.
As pointed out by Gelb et al. (2014), an SWF should not replicate the role
of the scal budget or nancial institutions and should seek investments
that crowd-in rather than crowd-out private sector investments. Gelb et
al. (2014) also show that public investments can be assessed based on
their nancial, economic and social returns. Examples of investments that
produce high economic and social returns include infrastructure projects,
public schools, and public hospitals. In general, investments with high
economic and social returns but low nancial returns should be part of the
scal budget. This is because such investments may require future cost
commitments for operations and maintenance, which should be taken into
account when planning for the scal budget. In contrast, an SWF should
seek investments with high nancial, economic and social returns.
The Kingdom’s traditional economic structure incentivizes the private
sector to seek government projects in the non-tradeable sector, which
generates high prots at a lower risk than projects in non-oil tradable
sectors that are highly exposed to competition in the export markets (Callen
et al. 2014). This justies an SWF stepping in to ll the gap by investing in
protable strategic industries, which could attract private sector investment.
Investments that provide high nancial returns and low economic and
social returns should be left to the private sector. An SWF should engage in
such investments by acquiring foreign assets instead, which can alleviate
real exchange rate appreciation. Figure 6 shows a simplied graph for the
allocation of domestic investments among the government, the private
sector, and the SWF.
Private sector SWF
Private sector
Government
Economic and social returns
Financial return
10
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
Investing in the domestic economy and the risk of ‘Dutch disease’
The so-called ‘Dutch disease’ results from the appreciation of the real
exchange rate lowering the competitiveness of non-resource tradable
sectors (Corden and Neary 1982; Corden 1984). In a xed exchange rate
system, this begins with a large inux of foreign currencies from the exports
of natural resources that increases the national income. If the foreign
currencies are converted to the local currency and spent in the domestic
economy, it generates extra domestic demand for goods and services
from both non-tradable and tradable sectors. Without easy access to the
global labor market, higher domestic demand pushes up wages, which
leads to higher prices for domestically produced goods and services.
Hence, one unit of a foreign currency buys fewer goods and services in the
local economy. Price increases for domestic tradable goods and services
reduces foreign and domestic demand for them since imports become
less expensive. Consequently, the tradable sector shrinks in size. There
are no substitution effects in the non-tradable sector, so an increase in the
demand for its outputs signicantly raises the price level of the sector. This,
in turn, causes real exchange rates to appreciate.
On the other hand, access to an elastic supply of low-wage labor helps to
prevent real exchange rates from appreciating. Increasing the supply of
migrant low-wage labor offsets the rise in the domestic demand for non-
tradable goods and services. Saudi Arabia, for example, was able to mitigate
the appreciation of its real exchange rate through the reliance of its private
sector on cheap foreign labor and pegging its exchange rate to the US$.
However, such a reliance decreases labor productivity, disincentivizes
technological innovation, prevents nationals from being employed in the
private sector and increases their unemployment rate. The availability of
low-wage foreign workers also incentivizes the private sector to seek
government projects in the non-tradeable sector, which hinders the
development of other productive non-oil tradable sectors (Callen et al. 2014).
The ongoing structural changes in the labor market will likely increase
wages and could see a signicant portion of foreign workers replaced with
Saudi workers. Therefore, the leakage of oil rents outside the economy
(through workers’ remittances) could diminish. Furthermore, local
content initiatives are likely to contribute to lower outows of oil income.
Traditionally, large expenditure on imported goods, coupled with an elastic
supply of foreign labor, controlled domestic inationary pressures resulting
from the inows of oil income, and helped to expand the economy’s
absorptive capacity. Capital spending by PIF needs to take the absorptive
capacity of the economy into consideration to prevent macroeconomic
‘overheating’ that could damage the efciency of this spending. The
inexibility of the Saudi labor market presents a serious bottleneck that
could limit the ability of the economy to absorb more inows of oil income.
Therefore, government investment programs that enhance the productivity
of the labor force, in order to offset its inexibility, are essential.
Conclusion
As an oil-dependent economy, Saudi Arabia is vulnerable to volatile and
uncertain revenue streams that could induce pro-cyclical scal policies.
The instability of Saudi government spending has adverse effects on the
country’s investment climate because it discourages the private sector from
making long-term investments. The associated cost of revenue volatility for
the Saudi economy is signicant, as outlined in Pierru and Matar (2014).
The ongoing
structural changes
in the labor market
will likely increase
wages and could see
a signicant portion
of foreign workers
replaced with Saudi
workers
11
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
The management of
a stabilization fund
should be integrated
with alternative
sources of nancing,
including domestic
and international
debt issuance, to
minimize the total
cost of borrowing
Unlike a stabilization
fund, the assets of
a sovereign wealth
fund should never be
withdrawn
A stabilization fund provides short-run protection against oil revenue
volatility by smoothing government expenditure through time, accumulating
reserves when oil revenues are high and allowing the government to draw
down from it when oil revenues are low. If this is coupled with clear and
transparent scal discipline, it can reduce scal uncertainty and create a
more predictable investment climate. The management of a stabilization
fund should be integrated with alternative sources of nancing, including
domestic and international debt issuance, to minimize the total cost of
borrowing.
Long-term issues associated with nite oil resources and the revenues they
generate can be tackled by establishing a sovereign wealth fund. Unlike a
stabilization fund, the assets of a sovereign wealth fund should never be
withdrawn. Instead, these assets should be treated as an endowment that
generates sustainable streams of income for current and future generations.
In fact, the aim of a sovereign wealth fund is to transform oil wealth
underground into other forms of wealth above the ground. By investing in
foreign assets, the fund transforms oil assets into foreign assets that yield
nancial rents rather than oil rents. To enable economic diversication, the
fund can invest domestically by unlocking strategic sectors of the economy
and creating more jobs for its growing population. The fund should seek
domestic investments with high nancial, economic and social returns.
These investments should crowd-in rather than crowd-out private sector
investment by creating an attractive entrepreneurship ecosystem in strategic
industries. However, the macroeconomic implications of a sovereign wealth
fund investing in its domestic economy must be taken into consideration.
Capital spending beyond the absorptive capacity of the economy can
push-up ination, leading to the appreciation of the economy’s real exchange
rate, and lowering the competitiveness of its non-oil tradable industries.
Investments that increase the efciency of doing businesses in the
non-tradable sector can expand the absorptive capacity of the economy and
alleviate the appreciation of its real exchange rate.
References
AlKathiri, Nader, Tarek N. Atalla, Frederic H. Murphy, and Axel Pierru.
2020. “Optimal Policies for Managing Oil Revenue Stabilization Funds: An
Illustration using Saudi Arabia” Resources Policy 67: 101686-101698.
Alsweilem, Khalid, and Malan Rietveld. 2017. Sovereign Wealth Funds
in Resource Economies: Institutional and Fiscal Foundations. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Bauer, Andrew. 2017. “Playthings and Parallel Budgets: The Economic and
Governance Performance of Sovereign Wealth Funds.” In New Frontiers
of Sovereign Investment, edited by Malan Rietveld and Perrine Toledano,
64-80. New York: Columbia University Press.
Callen, Tim, Reda Cherif, Fuad Hasanov, Amgad Hegazy, and Padamja
Khandelwal. 2014. “Economic diversication in the GCC: Past, present, and
future.” International Monetary Fund.
Corden, W. Max, and J. Peter Neary. 1982. “Booming sector and
de-industrialisation in a small open economy.The Economic Journal 92
(368): 825-848.
12
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
Corden, Warner Max. 1984. "Booming sector and Dutch disease
economics: Survey and consolidation." Oxford Economic Papers 36(3):
359-380.
Gelb, Alan, Silvana Tordo, and Havard Halland. 2014. “Sovereign Wealth
Funds and domestic investment in resource-rich countries: Love me, or
love me not?” World Bank-Economic Premise: 1-5.
Hamilton, Kirk, and Cameron Hepburn. 2014. “Wealth.Oxford Review of
Economic Policy 30(1): 1-20.
Hartwick, John M. 1977. “Intergenerational equity and the investing of
rents from exhaustible resources.The American Economic Review 67(5):
972-974.
Pierru, Axel, and Walid Matar. 2014. “The impact of oil price volatility on
welfare in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Implications for public investment
decision-making.The Energy Journal 35(2).
Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA). “Annual Statistics 2018.http://
www.sama.gov.sa/en-US/EconomicReports/Pages/YearlyStatistics.aspx
. “Monthly Statistics December 2017.
Van der Ploeg, Frederick, and Anthony J. Venables. 2011. “Harnessing
Windfall Revenues: Optimal Policies for Resource‐Rich Developing
Economies.The Economic Journal 121 (551): 1-30.
Venables, Anthony J., and Samuel E. Wills. 2016. “Resource Funds:
Stabilising, Parking, and Inter-Generational Transfer.Journal of African
Economies 25(suppl_2): ii20-ii40.
Wills, Samuel, and Rick van der Ploeg. 2014. “Why do so many oil
exporters peg their currency? Foreign reserves as a de-facto sovereign
wealth fund.New Perspectives.
World Bank. 2018. “The Changing Wealth of Nations.http://
www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2018/01/30/
the-changing-wealth-of-nations
13
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
About KAPSARC
About the project
The King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC) is a
non-prot global institution dedicated to independent research into energy economics,
policy, technology and the environment across all types of energy. KAPSARC’s
mandate is to advance the understanding of energy challenges and opportunities
facing the world today and tomorrow, through unbiased, independent, and high-caliber
research for the benet of society. KAPSARC is located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Strategies can be developed to help mitigate the effects of oil price shocks on the
Kingdom’s economy. Oil stabilization funds provide short-run protection against oil
revenue uctuations. The Saudi government’s deposits and reserves held at the Saudi
Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) have historically served as a buffer to decouple
the government’s budget from oil revenue uctuations. Sovereign wealth funds create
income for future generations to replace revenue streams from depletable resources –
one of the purposes of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. We have developed a
framework for optimizing policies for adding to and withdrawing from stabilization funds,
and applied it to Saudi Arabia as a case study. We will pursue this work by creating an
integrated framework for linking stabilization funds with sovereign wealth funds. Recent
data show the dependence of the country’s non-oil sector’s growth to oil prices, whereas
non-oil sector growth is key to achieving the Kingdom’s economic diversication
objectives. We will study this dependence through an in-depth analysis of the country’s
data, its national accounts and economic theory.
Legal Notice
© Copyright 2020 King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (“KAPSARC”).
This Document (and any information, data or materials contained therein) (the
“Document”) shall not be used without the proper attribution to KAPSARC. The
Document shall not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written permission
of KAPSARC. KAPSARC makes no warranty, representation or undertaking whether
expressed or implied, nor does it assume any legal liability, whether direct or indirect,
or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information that
is contained in the Document. Nothing in the Document constitutes or shall be implied to
constitute advice, recommendation or option. The views and opinions expressed in this
publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reect the ofcial views or
position of KAPSARC.
www.kapsarc.org