A petrodollar saved

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: must make deposits, and when they may withdraw cash, are no guarantee of good behaviour. In theory, Venezuela’s government is obliged to deposit oil revenues into its Investment Fund for Macroeconomic Stabilisation whenever oil rises above a reference price (currently $9 a barrel). In practice, the fund has suffered from frequent rule changes, and would have been abolished if Hugo Chávez’s 2007 referendum had not been defeated. It has seldom received what the rules promised.

By contrast, Norway’s parliament has discretion over how much revenue the state’s fund will receive, but that has not prevented it from becoming the second largest natural-resource fund in the world, with assets of $396.5 billion. Fiscally responsible governments may not need rules for contributions; irresponsible ones may not heed them.

Rules are useful for governments that are thriftier than Venezuela’s but more profligate than Norway’s, but only if they stick to them. Chile’s commitment to its copper-backed stabilisation fund was tested in July by protests demanding more government spending. An effective natural-resource fund requires a government that can resist both economic populism and kleptocracy. To break the resource curse, in short, one needs the kind of government that money cannot buy.