Much more than this, I did it Norway

I have a small, helpful suggestion for all of you who manage investment decisions for family offices, charities and rich individuals: the next time your highly paid, immaculately coiffured investment manager presents you with a sorry and lamentable series of performance statistics, refer them to the current academically motivated spat centring on the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund.

The conversation might go something like this: “OK Hugo, I know times are tough but I would like your analysis to be a bit more thorough, a bit more… Norwegian, perhaps.” Most managers try and blame their annus horribilis on the big, bad markets, but the Norwegians quite correctly wanted a better explanation so they asked a bunch of heavyweight academics to weigh into the debate. Much of the subsequent media coverage has centred on the debate about whether the fund’s active managers have added value – to which the immensely simplified answer seems to be a little but probably not enoug...