The determinants of Swedish aid flows between 1976 and 2015.

Sammanfattning: Sweden is one of the world's most important aid donors relative to the size of its economy, with Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows reaching 1.40 percent of GNI in 2015. Understanding where these flows end up is important both to ensure proper evaluation of the effectiveness of Swedish aid policy, but also for transparency obligations to the taxpayers financing the flows. For that reason, this thesis uses a panel aid data set from the OECD to investigate which recipient country-specific factors that have determined Swedish ODA flows over the past 40 years. The results indicate that recipient country income and property rights potentially are correlated with Swedish ODA flows, the former negatively and the latter positively. In addition, US ODA flows emerges as a positive predictor of Swedish aid donations. Additionally, this thesis provides a sub-investigation into whether periods of political transition change the importance of Swedish ODA determinants, specifically focusing on democracy and US aid flows. The results indicate that this is not the case.