We are honoured that H.E. Mr. Oleksiy Chernyshov, Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine, who is paying a visit to Stockholm as the President’s of Ukraine Special Envoy, chose to make the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) his first stop in his busy schedule today.

This brief provides an overview of the discussion on the relative merits of grants and loans in the literature on foreign aid, including a short section on debt relief initiatives. These claims are then tested against the context of Ukrainian post-war reconstruction, and it is argued that the case for providing grants is very strong. This argument is based on the magnitude of the investments needed, the need to create a long-run sustainable economy, the road towards a future EU membership, and the global value of a democratic and prosperous Ukraine as a bulwark against autocratic forces.

The world is darkened by Russia´s terrifying and tragic war against Ukraine. The Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) together with the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and the Embassy of Ukraine in Sweden hosted a fundraising event and discussion on how to provide intellectual and humanitarian support to faculty members, researchers, and students working within and outside Ukraine’s borders.

Former Swedish ambassador to Moscow and the OSCE Veronika Bard declares the OSCE project dead, calls for a Swedish-Russia strategy and warns against underestimating the Kremlin's political leadership.

Against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Swedish financial support to Russia has become questioned. Anders Olofsgård, Associate Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) and Deputy Director at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), explains why we need to understand what that support is actually financing and what its purpose is.

SITE researchers Maria Perrotta Berlin and Anders Olofsgård together with SITE research affiliated faculty Raj M. Desai (Georgetown University and Brookings Institution) examine the effect of a country's membership in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on the subnational distribution of World Bank aid. They find support for the hypothesis that aid recipient governments are better able to utilize aid flows for political favoritism during periods in which they are of geo-strategic value to major donors.

The Forum for Research on Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies (FREE Network) stands for peace, security and democracy and condemns Russia’s invasion of the independent and democratic nation of Ukraine and violation of international law.

Given the current situation, Swedish financial support to Russia has been put into question. This was recently discussed in the major Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, in an article in which Anders Olofsgård, Deputy Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), was interviewed among others.

In a recently published paper, Céline Zipfel, Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics, with Oriana Bandiera (LSE), Ahmed Elsayed (IZA), and Andrea Smurra (UCL), presents facts on labor markets in Africa and discusses policy priorities for boosting the creation of salaried jobs for young adults.

There are claims that development aid is ineffective and does not yield results. What does research say about the effects of development aid? SITE Deputy Director and researcher Anders Olofsgård provides his insights in the latest episode of "Biståndskvarten - Om forskning och fakta" by ForumCiV.