There is an increased pressure for firms to provide the financial market with additional information. Such disclosure is attached with different kinds of costs. In spite of these costs, and in spite of increased mandatory disclosures, firms choose to voluntary disclosure financial information to analysts and others. This indicates that firms also benefit from providing additional information. The subjects of this study is 431 annual reports from firms listed at the Stockholm Stock Exchange for 2002 and 2005 and the objective is to survey factors that can explain variations in firms? voluntary disclosure.

In the current situation there is not much written about assessment of laboratory work, and the majority of the working physics teachers are retiring and there are only a few newly qualified physics teachers. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how physics teachers assess laboratory work within upper secondary schools, with Gy2011 in mind. The new grade system, Gy2011, has a larger focus on the laboratory work then the earlier system Lpf 94. Skolverket has in their man-ual with examples of assessment two different sorts of laboratory experiments. The first assess-ment is regarding the planning of a laboratory work and the other about how able the pupil exe-cutes laboratory work.

The composing of new standards in the area of machinery safety is a continuous work which aims at writing standards that works as a tool for companies and enables them to control if the fundamental demands of security and health which is prescribed by law are reached. It is optional for the companies to choose if they want to use the standards. This report is written in cooperation with SIS and the study were performed within the technical committee SIS/TK 282. The report aims to investigating if the companies that choose to use standards see any economic advantages due to this work, how these advantages take form and where they originate. The main question formulation is how the profitability among companies that have adjusted their production to machinery safety standards are affected. The study was performed with an initial literature study which aimed at obtaining knowledge and an overview over the subject as well as investigate what former studies had resulted in.

In this report a study is carried out with the aim to identify added values of EPC projects implemented in schools in order to increase the interest of EPC projects on the market. The report examines how the planned maintenance, supervision, maintenance and corrective maintenance is affected, how insurance premiums and terms are affected, the indoor environment and how the tasks of the operating staff is changing. A literature study of energy savings, energy use in schools, maintenance and insurance as well as how energy efficiency improvements are related to the Swedish environmental objectives has been made. Visits were carried out in Ludvika, interviews were also carried out with operation technicians and local strategists in Ludvika as well as employees of insurance companies.Schools often have neglected maintenance and problems with ventilation and indoor environment. Schools also have a large energy saving potential due to their low utilization, mainly because they are empty parts of the year.

In this report a study is carried out with the aim to identify added values of EPC projects implemented in schools in order to increase the interest of EPC projects on the market. The report examines how the planned maintenance, supervision, maintenance and corrective maintenance is affected, how insurance premiums and terms are affected, the indoor environment and how the tasks of the operating staff is changing. A literature study of energy savings, energy use in schools, maintenance and insurance as well as how energy efficiency improvements are related to the Swedish environmental objectives has been made. Visits were carried out in Ludvika, interviews were also carried out with operation technicians and local strategists in Ludvika as well as employees of insurance companies.Schools often have neglected maintenance and problems with ventilation and indoor environment. Schools also have a large energy saving potential due to their low utilization, mainly because they are empty parts of the year.

Since 1983 Sweden has a general audit obligation for joint-stock companies. At this moment the Government has issued an investigation concerning the subject. The purpose of this paper is to examine what effects an abolition of the audit obligation for small joint-stock companies can have on the Swedish tax department regarding economic crime. An angel on the report is to examine how the tax department uses adverse auditor?s reports.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate the preparation of total and civil defense education in schools in the 1970s to gain insight into how the school looked and pondered the complicated world that existed outside the school's doors. By using the concepts of welfare state, welfare and civil defense culture, I have studied relevant materials to get answers to questions treating the total and civil education in schools after Lgr69, the way the state sees the subject and if it is possible to detect a civil defense culture in schools and if so, how it will be expressed.     The results show that the state emphasized education as incredibly important because knowledge of how to act in a crisis or war could be extremely crucial for the individuals and their survival. The education was so important that it got a role as a main factor in Lgr69. But even if the education was important the teachers had huge problems with the schedule and many teachers couldn´t educate all facts because they didn´t have enough time.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between Earnings Management (EM) and certain characteristics of management forecasts, among a sample of Swedish listed companies. The forecast characteristics studied are: 1) Forecast venue: How explicitly is the forecast presented? 2) Forecast precision: How detailed is the estimated number? 3) Forecast measure: Which measure(s) are forecasted? We use a sample of 68 annual management forecasts, obtained from year-end reports between the years 2007-2011. EM during the forecasted year (2008-2012) is estimated using the cross-sectional modified-Jones model. The forecast characteristics are then related to the degree of EM during the forecasted period.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate whether the implementation of the Solvency II directive will create a competitive advantage for the Swedish insurance companies compared with other insurance companies in Europe.Therefore the theoretical perspective illustrates the specific requirements and risk culture of the insurance industry and defines the critical success factors for a successful implementation of the directive. The empirical foundation is built on the QIS 5 reports for Sweden and Europe, interviews with the financial services and If insurance company as well as information from a seminar organized by KPMG. The analysis shows that the Swedish insurance companies meets the capital requirements of Solvency II by a large margin and that they are accustomed to risk management and reporting requirements from the traffic light model. This implies that the three critical success factors for a successful implementation of Solvency II are met, although with some limitations, and that Swedish insurance companies could possibly have a competitive advantage.     .

The purpose of this essay is to examine what happens with library e-resources after implementing the discovery tool Summon. Summon provides a Google-like experience and uses multiple facet options when users need to narrow their discovery. Observations of change in the libraries e-resources with regards to database searches, click-throughs in linkresolvers and full text downloads are examined through looking at earlier reports and statistics from libraries in America and England. This provides a way to compare with Chalmers University of Technology?s Library.

Purpose: The study examines the risk a rising from the acquisition of shares, and its relation to the expected return. We would like to see how a high-risk portfolio is related to a low-risk portfolio. Although studying the portfolios annual performance.Theory: The theories that have been used in the study are, Capital asset pricing model, CAPM and portfolio theory.Method: The study is based on a quantitative method, the time interval is from 2008 to 2010.The annual reports, historical stock prices for companies and the index are used to perform calculations based on the essay theories.Conclusion: The beta value has positive liner correlation with the expected return. When there are bad times in the world, the companies are negatively affected regardless of industry. The Portfolios developed in the same direction during the time period..

With the introduction of IFRS, the IASB left the previously used method of amortization and instead introduced fair value. Studies show that firms manipulate the value of goodwill based on agency related incentives and opportunities, such as bonus payment, management tenure and acquisition of firms. The responsibility of checking the quality of financial reports, and give other market participants reasons to trust them, is primarily on accountants. The transition to fair value thus creates a problem for accountants to actually check the fair values produces by firms. Our purpose is to investigate whether the working method of accountants is purposeful in order to maintain the credibility of goodwill values.

Agencies towards Sustainable Development ? A Study of Environmental Management Systems in Governmental Agencies 2005A vision of the Swedish government is to build an ecologically sustainable society. A tool in this effort is to implement environmental management systems (EMS). The aim of the thesis is to present in which phase of the implementation of EMS Swedish governmental agencies are. This will be done by compilation and evaluation of agencies? yearly environmental reports.The thesis is written in co-operation with the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Swedish EPA).

The argument whether women should drink alcohol during pregnancy, has been debated for centuries. Women's drinking behaviour throughout the ages is not a static phenomenon but has changed in compliance with the customs of the time. The purpose of this study was not to evaluate if alcohol damages the unborn child, but rather to explore how women, who have just given birth and hence have become mothers, looked at alcohol in relation to pregnancy and motherhood. To accomplish this we have used a qualitative method with a semi-structured interview guide. What has turned out to be central to our conclusions is the fact that though, in today's society, there is access to newly produced science reports concerning alcohol in connection to injuries to the foetus, it is our belief that the demands and expectations directed on the mother are dominant in this matter..

The intent with this paper is to investigate the medieval habitation in central Old Uppsala. This time-period has over the years been neglected. Therefore I wish to summarize and ana-lyze the medieval habitation to see what can be said about its continuity, and also to investi-gate why it is located in certain areas.Due to the amount of source material I have limited my investigation area to the central Old Uppsala. It is possible that this limitation will affect the result of the research but without the limitations the investigation area would have been too large to handle.The source material has been collected from excavation reports and the summarized. My theory is material culture and material agency.