Treasure Troves: Understanding Sovereign Wealth Funds Using the SWIFT Dataset

Abstract

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) are integral to major forces shaping the international political economy, including global finance, the expansion of state capitalism, the eastward shift of economic power, and resource nationalism. Their rapid ascent has spurred a growing body of research on their origins, design, savings, investments, and international impact. However, divergent research foci, diverse samples, limited data granularity, and barriers to comprehensive data access hinder systematic comparisons, robust analysis, and causal inference on SWFs. We introduce the Sovereign Wealth Institutions and Fund Trends (SWIFT) dataset, a new public resource consolidating extensive information on SWF characteristics. Spanning 1932–2023—with substantive cross-national variation from the 1960s—SWIFT contains detailed data on 145 funds in seventy-nine countries, making it the largest publicly accessible dataset on SWFs. We survey existing knowledge, assess key sources of evidence, and describe the new dataset. We then demonstrate its utility through empirical analyses that expand, challenge, and refine current understandings of the international and domestic political economy of SWFs. Finally, we outline future research directions, particularly SWFs’ roles in South–South and South–North relations, international cooperation, the green transition, and long-term economic transformation in their home countries. 

Publication Information

Ahmadov, A.K., Althuis, J., Guliyev, F., Jurvanen, O., & van den Dijssel, S. (2025), Treasure Troves: Understanding Sovereign Wealth Funds Using the SWIFT Dataset, International Studies Quarterly, 69(4).

• ISSN: 0020-8833, e-ISSN: 1468-2478