The Basilicata Wealth Fund: Resource Policy and Long-run Economic Development in Southern Italy

Arbeitspapier

This paper contributes to the growing political economy literature of within-country natural resources management, by proposing a new resource policy for the oil-rich southern Italian region of Basilicata. The policy proposal is to establish a (regional) wealth fund in which all the royalty revenues from non-renewable natural resource exploitation in Basilicata would be stored and fully converted into low-risk financial assets. The scope is to give priority to long-run investments as to better exploit revenues from large-scale extraction of natural capital. Establishing a wealth fund at the regional sub-national level is a novel approach that can be applied to other resource-rich regions in the world. I label the fund as the Basilicata Wealth Fund (BWF). The BWF would be a regionally owned investment fund, however independently administered from national authorities (for instance, as an independent legal entity under the jurisdiction of the Bank of Italy). In addition, the paper posits a transparent and clear-cut spending fiscal rule in order to let regional authorities use the resource revenues to finance economic policy. The clear advantage from the BWF would be the stronger focus on long-run economic development and the higher accountability, hence avoiding misuse of resource revenues for myopic fiscal spending.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Nota di Lavoro ; No. 96.2015

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economic Development: Agriculture; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Other Primary Products ; Exhaustible Resources and Economic Development ; Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes ; Regional Development Planning and Policy
• Subject: Exhaustible Natural Resources ; Sovereign Wealth Fund ; Regional Economy ; Long-run Economic Development ; Basilicata

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Iacono, Roberto
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM)
• (where): Milano
• (when): 2015

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/130277
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET