Poverty is a serious problem of the contemporary world. According to the World Bank statistics more than 1/6 of the world's population suffers from extreme poverty (with daily income less than 1,25 dollars). The main tool of poverty alleviation is the official development aid, which is based on transfers of funds from developed to developing countries. The aim of this thesis is to assess, by how far has the development aid been succesful in reducing the poverty. The analysis of two regions -- East Asia and Sub-saharan Afrika -- will serve this purpose. In East Asia the poverty was reduced by 750 million of people within 25 years. However, the role of development aid was found to be negligible. Sub-saharan Africa, despite large volumes of aid, didn't experience any decrease in poverty incidence at all. The analysis implied that official development aid is not a way out of poverty. The solution is to integrate developing countries to international trade and to follow convenient economic policies establishing an environment favourable to business and foreign direct investments.

The first three papers of this Ph.D. thesis experimentally study the preferences of individuals making cross-border charitable donations. In Is Foreign Aid Paternalistic? (with Anna Breman and Felix Masiye) subjects choose whether to make a monetary or a tied transfer (mosquito nets) to an anonymous household in Zambia. The mean donation of mosquito nets differs significantly from zero, and paternalistic donors constitute a higher share of the sample than do purely altruistic donors. The second paper, Corruption and the Case for Tied Aid (with Anna Breman), compares the willingness to give money to Zambia's national health budget (CBoH) with the willingness to donate mosquito nets to a health-care clinic in Lusaka. Donors clearly prefer tied aid to untied program aid. Exit questionnaires suggest the reason to be a fear of corruption and misallocation at the CBoH. In Altruism without Borders? (with Anna Breman), we study whether the willingness to give increase with the information given about the recipients. We find no significant effect of identification on donations. Women and Informality: Evidence from Senegal, the fourth paper (with Elena Bardasi), uses household survey data to study women’s work and gender wage gaps in the formal and informal sector in Dakar. Multinomial logit analysis reveals that women are 3-4 times less likely to work formally rather than informally. Wage regressions reveal that little schooling, for instance, explains a considerable part of the gender wage gap. In the informal sector, however, the wage gap between men and women remains at 28%.    The fifth paper, Does Innovation Pay? A Study of the Pharmaceutical Product Cycle, examines how a drug’s life cycle depends on its degree of therapeutic innovation. All New Chemical Entities introduced in Sweden between 1987 and 2000 are rated into one of three innovation classes: A (important gains); B (modest gains); and C (little gains). Over a 15-year life cycle, the average class A drug raises 15% higher revenues than B drugs and 114% higher revenues than C drugs. But yearly class A and C sales differences are rarely significant. When comparing innovative (A and B pooled) and imitative (C) drugs, 15-year life cycle revenues of innovative drugs exceed those of imitative drugs by 100%. This sales difference is significant in 19 out of 20 years after launch. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, 2008 Sammanfattning jämte 5 uppsatser

The aim of this thesis called 'Problems and perspectives of development aid: donors and developing countries' are main questions of development aid in general. Basic ideas of the whole concept are defined in the first chapter. The history of development aid and international theories' perspectives of development aid are mentioned here. The second chapter consists of classifications and characteristics of developing countries together with their capacities for integration. The donors are presented in the third chapter. The main part of the thesis is the fourth chapter in which the problems of development aid are analysed on the grounds of contemporary field literature. At the beginning of the fourth chapter the qualitative problems of development aid are analysed together with the donors' motivations for its distribution. The best possible form of development aid is discussed later on - whether it is better to provide developing countries with loans or non-repayable grants. Moreover, the coordination problems within the development aid are discussed as well as possible alternatives to development aid - such as trade. The thesis pays also attention to negative consequences of development aid. Possible solutions to the problems mentioned are sketched within each sub-chapter.

In the last two decades, there has been a significant rise in women’s rights Non-Govermental Organizations (NGOs) in Nepal, working on issues ranging from economic and political empowerment to violence against women and discrimination. Most of these local NGOs rely on international funding to pursue their advocacy and project work. This brings up questions of power imbalance regarding decision-making and agenda setting in their relations with donor International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) as the latter wield substantial financial control. Academic and practice-based research on power dynamics between donor INGOs in the Global North and recipient NGOs in the Global South has mainly focused on the benefits of NGO involvement in the development sector. Drawing on postcolonial, transnational feminist theories, this study uses a critical perspective to identify and explore possible power imbalances and explores the following key issues: Funding sustainability, accountability, collaboration, and cooperation between local and international women’s rights NGOs, and finally, local ownership. The inquiry builds upon empirical data from in-dept interviews with local and international women’s rights NGOs working in Kathmandu and the limited available secondarysources on the situation in Nepal. The findings point to clear power asymmetries, with local NGOs having to conform to Western standards in project design, implementation, reporting and monitoring, leaving limited space for flexibility or considering the situation on the ground. Nonetheless, this study also concludes that NGOs are not under the complete influence of their international donors, as suggested by some literature, but rather use the available space to maneuver and push their cause. Finally, based on the insights of this research and considering new initiatives that attempt to transcend the current donor-recipient power dynamics, this study identifies a handful of potential principles to guide more equitable relations between women’s rights NGOs and donors.

In years long negotiations on the new global climate change regime, financial support provided for adaptation and mitigation in developing countries have been one of the most contentious issues. Billions dollars are in questions annually, disbursed both by private investments, as well as substantially via public funds. The fundamental question resonating in the negotiations and elsewhere though is the issue of efficient delivery. Given the scale of resources, which should be mobilized and disbursed, given the current experience with inefficiencies in ODA, given the fact that existing climate change funds are now disbursing millions but not billions, the efficiency is really the key for success of future climate regime. Moreover, efficient delivery is a pre-condition for "preventing dangerous interference with climate change", which is the ultimate goal of climate change policy enshrined in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change envisages. It is a widespread belief that inefficiency in disbursing public funds remains at the recipient's side. This paper tries to approach the efficiency question at the case of the Global Environment Facility, the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund and the World Bank Climate Investment Funds. It asks the question whether the existing funding mechanisms in climate change are set up optimally in order to disburse funds efficiently. When looking at their internal policies and guidelines, it focuses on the four leading questions -- how can funds be accessed, who decides, who and how implements and how are funds held accountable. It finds that there are major differences between the tree funds in how and by whom are priorities and objectives decided, what are the fund's requirements on recipients, and how does the fund control the efficiency of its spending. This paper brings an in-depth analysis of weak and strong policies in existing climate change funds with regard to efficient delivery.