Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) represent both an increasingly important - and potentially dominant - category of alternative investor, and a novel form for governments to project their interests both home and abroad. As such, they represent both economic actors and embody power vested in the financial and diplomatic resources they can leverage. Although at times they have acted in concert with other alternative investors, their intergenerational savings function should, in theory at least, promote more long-termist thinking. However, they may be impelled in towards greater short termism, in response to popular pressures, demands from predatory elites and/or unforeseen external shocks.

Of all the categories of alternative investment, SWFs perhaps embody the most contradictory pressures, making for diverse and complex outcomes. The aim of this volume is to consolidate the present state of the art, and advance the field through new applied, conceptual and theoretical insights. The volume is ordered into chapters that explore thematic issues and country studies, incorporating novel insights in on the most recent developments in the SWF ecosystem.

This handbook is organized into four sections and 23 chapters. The four sections are: Governance of SWFs, Political and Legal Aspects of SWFs, Investment Choices and Structures of SWFs, Country and Regional Analyses of SWFs.