How does the recent wave of preferential trading arrangements affect, the incentives for further trade liberalization of member states, and the possibility of obtaining global free trade? And are there any differences in this aspect between custom unions and other forms of preferential trading arrangements? These questions are well debated and have divided international trade researchers into two camps, one in favour for preferential trading arrangements and the other side against them. I have used well acknowledged researchers in the area of international trade theory to make a literature study of the above mentioned key elements in the debate. When comparing the two sides I have focused mainly on their differences, assumptions and results. I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing to be alarmed by of the wave of regionalism that?s occurring in the world today, but caution should be applied and more research in this area is necessary before any certain conclusions can be drawn.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka och problematisera den ideale medborgaren i Lgr11 och Making the PYP happen: A curriculum framework for international primary education (2009). En kvalitativ textanalys av de båda läroplanerna har genomförts för att undersöka karakteristiska drag och färdigheter hos den ideale medborgaren, samt bakomliggande filosofier och begränsningar.De två läroplanerna och deras medborgarideal är på många sätt väldigt lika varandra, men de olika påverkansfaktorerna leder dem till olika uttryck av deras demokratiska grundtanke. Analysen visar att de båda läroplanerna ligger i linje med den internationella läroplansutvecklingen vad gäller sitt demokratiska medborgarskapsideal, men att Making the PYP happen: A curriculum framework for international primary education (2009) påvisar en mer konsekvent och aktiv tolkning av den demokratiska medborgaren. De två läroplanerna är grundade i olika pedagogiker och läroplanskoder, något som påverkar elevens relation till stoffet och därmed även beskrivningen av den ideale medborgaren. Som andra läroplaner är de formulerade på ett särskilt sätt av särskilda anledningar, något som kräver en medveten hållning hos de lärare som vill utbilda demokratiska och källkritiska medborgare ? i enlighet med läroplanen!.

Background and problem discussion: Sustainability reporting has recently risen in importance and a rising number of companies choose to issue voluntary stand-alone sustainability reports. Their non-regulated nature increases the opportunity for management to angle the information in these disclosures to their own advantage. Lately the focus has shifted from examining what kind of information is provided in environmental disclosures, to analyzing how the information is presented.Purpose: The purpose is to examine if managers in the energy sector use optimistic tone when issuing sustainability reports. The aim is to find out if the tone applied in environmental disclosures is in congruence with either the environmental or economic performance or if an excessively positive tone is being used to mislead readers.Limitations: This study is limited to information found in environmental disclosures from private companies in the energy sector, issued in 2012 or 2013. Environmental performance is defined as the amount of CO2e emissions and economic performance refers to annual company revenues.Methodology: The quantification of optimistic tone is conducted using a content analysis, relying on a pre-specified wordlist and a pilot study.

Background: The regulation of banks is increasing in order to stabilize the financial market. Despite this increase in regulation, financial crises still continue to occur. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is gradually increasing the capital requirements for banks, yet the increase in capital requirements doesn?t seem to solve the problem. This raises the question: how does capital regulation affect banks? Purpose: The purpose of this study is, primarily to illustrate the effects that capital regulation has on risk and efficiency on banks within the European Union, but secondary also study the relationship between risk, efficiency and capital regulation.Method: To achieve the purpose of this study, a deductive approach has been used, where the problem is assumed to be due to an agency problem.

To reach objectives within EU?s Habitatdirective and the national environmental objectives, more information about semi-natural pastures is required. The expression semi-natural pasture is used for pastures that during the latest time are uncultivated and unfertilized. Semi-natural pastures are important in many respects for example to conserve the biodiversity and for our cultural history. The aim of my study was to compile and calculate the area of semi-natural pastures by use existing sources of information.

1st of may 2003, a new energy system based on electricity certificates, was initiated in Sweden. The purpose with this system, is to stimulate an enlargement of energy production from renewable sources. The electricity system, ist built on that the producers of energy from renewable sources confer a electricity certificate from the government for every produced MW energy from renewable sources. The electricity certificate is supposed to be turned over and with that generate reciepts to the producers. Furthermore there is an obligation for the energyusers und energysuppliers, that means that the users and the suppliers every year the 1st of april got to have electricity certificates in proportion to their energy consumption during previous year.

This paper aims to give an insight into how venture capital work with their investments in the school sector. The purpose of the paper is to examine their work, regarding to goals of the company and the process of controlling the goals.  The study also aims to determine the way the companies work with value growth.This study uses a qualitative research method, where the theories license to operate, the relationship value management framework, agency-principal and new public management theory is tested in relation to the collected data. Eleven persons were interviewed in this paper. This paper also aims to give an overview to venture capital in the school sector, where it will examine whether financial goals could collide with social goals.What the study can tell is that venture capital does not have a license to operate in this sector, according to the theory.

This thesis has been performed at International Aluminum Casting AB in Eskilstuna,Sweden.International Aluminum Casting is currently working with a number of improvementsin their production in order to achieve their vision of being the leading aluminum foundry in Sweden. As a step in their improvement efforts, focus was directed ondeveloping the company's fixtures for machining.Efforts were focused on two main objectives: to develop a complete proposal on afixture which leads to a more rational use of an assigned part and also form general design advice for development of fixtures in the future.During the work progress, discussions have been made with experts at International Aluminum Casting within the field of fixture design. The objective was to obtain sufficient knowledge about the underlying problems with the current fixture for the part. At this stage of the thesis, a number of essential criteria for fixture design were produced. Information and inspiration were obtained by examining the company?s currently developed fixtures.After gathering the necessary information the process of developing three different fixture concepts started.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explain which factors that affects Swedish listed companies choice of placement for the corporate governance report when the regulation gives different options.Methodology: The chosen research philosophy is positive, research strategy is deductive and methodology is quantitative.Theoretical Perspectives: As support for the dependent (placement) and independent factors agency theory, positive accounting theory, accounting choice, legitimacy-, stakeholder-, and institutional theory are used.                  Empirical foundation:The sample consists of 249 companies. The empirical data consists of the companies Annual reports and Corporate Governance reports for financial year 2011 or when split financial year, 2010/2011. Limitations: A limitation of the study is that it is based on observations from only one year why it is not certain that the results should have been the same if a comparison between several years had been done.Conclusions: The factors size and growth explain the placement of the Corporate Governance Report in Swedish listed companies..

I detta arbete unders?ks ?gonr?relser p? tavlan Terrassen vid Sainte Adresse (1867) av Claude Monet, med hj?lp av en stokastisk modell som simulerar hur betraktarens blick f?rflyttas p? tavlan. Modellen baseras p? ?gonr?relsedata fr?n 20 f?rs?kspersoner som observerade tavlan i tre minuter, d?r modelleringen begr?nsats till de f?rsta 30 sekunderna. I analysen anv?nds sackader och fixeringar f?r att beskriva ?gonr?relser.

This essay is included as a sub-study of a survey about child poverty, which the Department of Sociology at Uppsala University, the Ombudsman for Children and Gillbergska Stiftelsen (the Gillberg?s foundation) has been commissioned by Uppsala Town to implement. The intent of this essay is to investigate how three pre-school managers in the municipal preschool in Uppsala describe child poverty, how they see the preschool?s social responsibility and how they manage child poverty in their practical operation. The essay is a qualitative study and informants' responses has been analyzed and related to symbolic interactionism, the thesis theoretical basis.

Purpose:  The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the major car companies have been affected by the global financial crisis. We would also want to look at how revenues and profits have been affected, and what the consequences have been both within the company and the market in general. It?s also interesting to see how profitability and financial stability has been affected. We had chosen to do a ?before-after? comparison, and we chose to compare the years 2007 and 2009.Boundaries: We have chosen to concentrate on a corporation in the Asian market, more specifically Toyota.

Syfte: att sammanställa vad som finns publicerat om digital avtrycksteknik och jämföra denna teknik med konventionell avtrycksteknik för fast kron- och broprotetik och på så sätt underlätta för operatörer att välja metod. Material och metod: litteratursökningar gjordes via Pubmed, Science Direct och genom handsökning i International Journal of Computerized Dentistry och Quintessence International. Informationssökningar gjordes även via fabrikörernas hemsidor och i litteratur vid Malmö Högskolas Odontologiska bibliotek. Resultat: det finns ett fåtal publikationer, varav de flesta är in vitro studier. De gav underlag för en jämförande diskussion av följande punkter: tidseffektivitet och användarvänlighet, precision och passform, kostnad, miljövänlighet samt patientvänlighet. Konklusion: denna litteraturstudie visar att på grundval av de publikationer som finns idag så fungerar den digitala avtryckstekniken tillfredsställande och fullt jämförbart med konventionell teknik för fast kron- och broprotetik. Det finns idag vissa belägg för att digitala tekniker kan ersätta den konventionella vad gäller precision. Det bör dock påpekas att de studier som finns tillgängliga idag är in vitro och dessa behöver kompletteras med och verifieras genom kliniska studier..

Today many separated children and youth up to 18 years - children in the sense of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - flee from war and armed conflicts around the world. Many of them come to Sweden for protection and to apply for asylum.The aim of this study is to examine how the national Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå - TT - constructs the image of separated children and youth. The main research questions have been: How does TT construct the image of the separated refugee children? The more detailed questions put to examine this main question have been: what are the issues being focused in the reporting and what discourses, voices and sources are let into the journalistic material?The theoretical perspective should be considered as social constructionistic where the basic idea is that the image of the separated child also constructs the way society looks upon them, their rights and their needs, affecting how these children will be welcomed and treated when thay arrive in our society. The empirical study is a qualitative analysis of text, produced in the span 2007- April 20th 2010.

Tourism in the Arctic and Antarctic is increasing rapidly. In both Polar Regions, the cruise tourism is predominant. Several of the tour operators arrange trips under the banner of ecotourism, meaning that the trips should be ecologically sustainable. To ensure ecotourism standards there are different types of certifications; for cruise travels in the Arctic there is AECO (the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators) certification, and for travels to the Antarctic IAATO (the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators). Promoters of ecotourism argue that these trips are important because they create support for conservation work among tourists making them ?polar ambassadors?.