Salma Ma­hamed

Over the past decades, aid budgets have declined, new policy objectives have emerged, and new actors are increasingly gaining prominence in global development cooperation. My doctoral dissertation studies how these changes in the 21st century affect how aid is allocated with special focus on the tension between a shift towards a market-based approach that emphasize the role of the private sector and traditional development assistance that highlight government-government relations and poverty reduction. 

I study these shifts in cross-country settings, bureaucratic institutions and at the firm level. At the country and bureaucratic level, I analyze governments aid policies including the instruments they employ and their geographic aid flows. At the firm level, I analyze how firms that are increasingly targeted in development assistance respond to these new policies. To address these questions, I mainly employ quantitative methods. I theorize change in development assistance informed by institutional perspectives and interest-based approaches. 

I have a double MSc in Public Management and Social Development from the Sino-Danish Research Center in Beijing and previous work experience as a policy officer in the Danish Ministry of Finance.