72Received 25.03.2024. Revised 03.04.2024. Accepted 04.04.2024.
Abstract. As history shows, in difficult periods, there is invariably an increase in the state’s involvement in economic life. As of now, there is a number fundamental macrotrends showing that the world fell into a highly dangerous situation of so called polycrisis. These include more and more evident dysfunction of the US-centric model of globalization, the inexorable formation of new independent centers of international power, extremely high level of geopolitical turbulence. The global financial and economic sphere continues to function due to massive debt pumping which translates to its underlying fragility. That is why the formation of an efficient system of sustainable development, as proclaimed in the UN SDG program, is so urgent. In order to overcome the current state of instability the world economy needs to found and engage stable and reliable sources of long-term capital instead of borrowed money. Such capital is available with the institutional investors, primarily the sovereign wealth funds and pension funds. As for the first ones, in recent years, they have noticeably diversified the goals, directions and objects of their operations. The changes are so serious that a term “sovereign wealth funds 3.0” entered into the analytical discourse. In the activities of most state investors, there is a tendency to shift the focus from the external to the internal one, which does not allow capital to completely dissolve in the global financial system. The geographical priorities of investment are changing: if initially the focus of state funds was on the most developed economies of the world, now it is beginning to shift towards the world majority, which in the future should contribute to a more equal distribution of productive forces and wealth and, as a result, to increase the stability of the world economy and improve the quality of its dynamics. “Sovereign wealth funds 3.0” are also characterized by new methods of funding, when it is provided by giving the fund the right to use cash flows generated by the state assets entrusted to it. Some sovereign wealth funds, having reached a certain level of maturity, enter the global private capital market, partially filling the deficit of reliable debt instruments observed there. Due to the peculiarities of financing and a long-term planning horizon, large sovereign wealth funds are able to painlessly absorb temporary financial losses, compensating them in the long-term perspective. This allows them to carry out the most important long-term projects. Thus, the state investment funds make a significant, though not always visible and appreciated, contribution into the stabilization of the financial market and the global economy at large.
Keywords: world economy, sustainable development, investment, sovereign wealth funds, global assets
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