34.Internatonal Public Finance Conference / Turkey April 24-27, 2019, Antalya – Turkey April 24-27, 2019, Antalya - TURKEY 241 DOI: 10.26650/PB/SS10.2019.001.037 SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS: THE CASE OF NORWAY Hüseyin Burak ÖZGÜL 1 Abstract Sovereign Wealth Funds that emerged in the mid-twenteth century and whose numbers have largely grown since then, have become an important issue at the heart of discussions today. In this context, The Government Pension Fund-Global, established under the name of Government Petroleum Fund in 1990, atracts the atenton as the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world today. Partcularly good governance, transparency, importance of ethical values in investments, consistently dynamic structure are the main factors that feature in the development of the fund. Hence, in the study, The Government Pension Fund-Global has been examined in terms of guiding to Turkey Wealth Fund, established in 2016 and one of the world’s newest fund. Keywords: Sovereign Wealth Funds, The Government Pension Fund of Norway, The Government Pension Fund- Global, The Government Petroleum Fund of Norway JEL Code: F30, G23, G38. 1. Introducton The term “Sovereign Wealth Fund” was frst used in 2005 by Andrew Rozanov, one of the State Street Bank of America. Rozanov indicated that by beterment of macroeconomy, terms of trade and fnancial stability of a country and implementaton of fnancial spending limitaton policy, budget surplus and foreign trade surplus accumulate. He stated that therefore, to manage the surplus at issue, investment insttutons were established, and they could be called Sovereign Wealth Funds (Ping & Chao, 2009: 2). There are three key features of Wealth Funds. First of these features is that Wealth Funds are stated-controlled. Second, they mainly invest abroad. Third, they are established in accordance with long term objectves, by and large to implement macroeconomic objectves. Thus, assets of the Fund, is diferent from the Central Bank reserves, the purpose of which is only to equilibrate balance of payments and should not be confused with other insttutons, and establishments, and funds (IWG, 2008: 27) 2 . Sovereign Wealth Funds, though it emerged as a fnancial issue in 21 st century, they date back to a long tme. In literature, it is stated that the frst modern sovereign wealth fund in line with IMF defniton is the one established in Kuwait in 1953 to manage surplus of income from oil (Alheshel, 2015: 2). The Funds which were few in 1950s, from the end of 90s, increased enormously in number and the Funds at issue spread to the world. Today, there are 78 Sovereign Wealth Funds in 50 countries in total (SWFI Insttute, 2019). 1 Res. Asst., Istanbul University, burak.ozgul@istanbul.edu.tr 2 For further informaton on sovereign wealth funds. See: (Özgül, 2018).