The state of research on sovereign wealth funds

The new global economic and political environment brings new challenges to sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and forces them to adopt new strategies to adapt to the environmental changes. This study is a sequel to Fotak, Gao, and Megginson (2017). We focus on the newly produced research on SWFs and confirm the impact of new environmental changes on SWFs' asset allocations and decision-making process. Recent studies on cross-border SWF investments show that SWFs are different from other private institutional investors although no evidence explicitly proves that SWFs have exerted political influence on recipient countries through their cross-border deals. SWFs are improving their transparency. However, the variations in transparency and institutionalization are attributed to the disparities in national culture, political regime, and internal political dynamics. We re-examine the long-term impact of SWF investments on target firms and industries and affirm the necessity to consider the heterogeneity among SWFs. We also survey the research investigating the government's motivations to establish new SWFs.