Suchergebnisse

This paper is an analysis of the foreign Aid Policies of two OECD Development Assistance Committee member countries – Finland and Ireland. The analysis reveals that both Finland and Ireland share high principles on their relations with the developing world, although their current policy outlooks appear to differ significantly. Despite Finland's good economic performance and prosperity largely generated by the global demand and market access, the government has so far failed to include the increasing of ODA on its priority agenda. In addition to the declining commitment, the selection criteria for Finnish aid recipients appears to be partially commercially motivated. Ireland on the other hand has a solid record of targeting the poorest of the poor with its development assistance and has recently increased development country focus in national policies. The challenge for Ireland is the effective utilisation of these funds and even more importantly keeping the government's public, international commitment to the 0,7 percent recommendation level despite the possible future slowdown of the economy.

Valco (1976–1980) was a state-owned company that manufactured cathode ray tubes for the television industry. The company's scandalous failure has been widely identified as one of the largest investment errors in Finland's economic history. This book is the first in-depth study of the roots, events, and consequences of that project.
This study analyses Valco from a microhistorical perspective, looking at the numerous factors that led to its failure, from the company's founding process to investigations after its demise. These events are linked to broader phenomena in economic and business history, such as the changing economic policy of the government and the emergence of global supply chains in the electronics industry.
Valco is a significant single case with a concrete impact on Finland's economic history. First, it changed the general perception of state-owned companies and, because of this, also more general perceptions of the role of the state in the economy. As a result, the initiative to develop the electronics industry was transferred to private companies such as Nokia. Second, Valco's case revealed the problems of state ownership of companies in a very concrete way. Due to Valco's failure, the objectives of state ownership were clarified, and the corporate governance system was modernised. In this way, Valco is linked to the modernization of Finnish state capitalism from the 1970s onwards.