Harnessing Windfall Revenues in Developing Economies: Sovereign Wealth Funds and Optimal Tradeoffs Between Citizen Dividends, P

Frederick (Rick) van der Ploeg and Anthony Venables

No 6954, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: A windfall of foreign aid or natural resource revenue faces government with choices of how to manage public borrowing, public asset accumulation, and the distribution of funds to households (across time and household types), particularly when the windfall is both anticipated and temporary. These choices are acute if some households do not have access to credit markets and are unable to smooth consumption, and if the country as a whole is not a price-taker in international capital markets - both reasonable descriptions of many developing countries experiencing resource (or aid) booms. We analyse the optimal policy actions for countries in this position and show that the usual permanent income hypothesis prescription of engineering a permanent increase in consumption financed by borrowing ahead of the windfall and then accumulating a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) is not optimal. Heavily indebted countries with a small windfall should both increase current consumption and accumulate capital to accelerate their development. Only if the windfall is large relative to initial debt is it optimal to build a SWF. We study the intricate dynamic trade-offs faced when using the windfall to pay off debt and possibly accumulate a SWF, build public infrastructure and hand out citizen dividends. Finally, we show that a more sophisticated range of instruments (e.g., an asset holding subsidy) makes the trade-offs easier.

Keywords: Asset holding subsidy; Credit constraints; Debt management; Developing economies; Optimal fiscal policy; Private investment; Public infrastructure; Risk premium on foreign debt; Sovereign wealth fund; Windfall public revenues (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E60 F34 F35 F43 H21 H63 O11 Q33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP6954 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6954

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP6954

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().