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Recent policy discussions surrounding the creation of a U.S. sovereign wealth fund (SWF) have placed institutional independence at the center of governance design. Because no federal U.S. SWF currently exists, this study evaluates independence using evidence from U.S. state investment funds and large international SWFs. We construct a novel, hand-collected independence measure grounded in the Santiago Principles, capturing legal separation from government, board composition and delegated investment authority. Our sample comprises 14 U.S. state funds and 29 of the world’s largest non-U.S. sovereign funds. We find no statistically significant difference in average independence between the two groups, supporting the use of U.S. state funds as a valid proxy for federal fund design. Regression results indicate that independence is strongly and positively associated with established governance indices and national governance quality, yet is unrelated to fund size or the economic scale of the sponsoring country. Among cultural dimensions, achievement and success orientation is negatively associated with independence. Collectively, the findings establish independence as a distinct and policy-relevant dimension of SWF governance, with direct implications for the design and oversight of a prospective U.S. federal fund.
Clark et al. (2026) studied this question.