This study's main objective was to identify adolescents participation in alternative sport activities and which kind of physical activity that was preferred by adolescents who didn't had any earlier experience of sport clubs. The study combined interviews and surveys with the purpose to get both adolescents and sport leaders perspective. A total of five interviews were performed and fifty-four surveys was collected. The results showed that adolescents already physical active were those who participated in alternative sport activities. Who participate in alternative sport activities can depend on habitus, comprehended capital forms and in which social field the sport activities exists..

This essay discusses and evaluates the international currency market in regards to efficiency. To prove the theory that, the difference between expected and actual exchange rates is explained by the difference in expected and actual interest rates and the difference in expected and actual inflation between countries, a model was developed. This model was inspired by the paper of Sebastian Edwards (1982), and is based on three theories; UIP, IS/LM and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. The model uses 16 regressions estimated from three pairs of curriencies: $/SEK, £/SEK and ?/SEK.

The spread of digital photography has created major changes in the previously stable Swedish photofinishing market. We investigate how companies act to survive in the face of technological change, through our research question: What strategies have actors in the photofinishing business chosen during the changeover from analog to digital photofinishing? Using a deductive method, we have conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 actors in the photofinishing business. Innovation management studies innovation from a number of perspectives, describing effects of innovations on the competitive ability of established actors, and on the value of their resources. The companies were not prepared for the speed of the change.

Denna uppsats undersöker huruvida ett antal aktiemarknader på Balkan tillfredställer den svaga formen av marknadseffektivitet under perioden 2003-2007. Svag marknadseffektivitet innebär att priset på en finansiell tillgång reflekterar all historisk prisinformation. Om en marknad är svagt effektiv leder analys av historisk kursinformation inte till överavkastning eftersom all historisk information redan är diskonterad av marknaden. För att pröva den svaga formen av effektivitet för Kroatien, Makedonien, Montenegro, Serbien och Slovenien genomförs olika statistiska tester såsom autokorrelationstest, runs test, varianskvottest och regressionsanalys.Samtliga tester i studien genomförs på dagsavkastningar. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att samtliga avkastningsserier lider av positiv autokorrelation, vilket innebär att den historiska avkastningen i viss mån kan användas för att predicera den framtida avkastningen.

Parallel import in the European Union is the perfectly legal activity under Art. 28-30 EC of buying goods in a low-price country in order to ship and sell them in a high-price country. The pharmaceutical market in Europe is subject to the subsidiartiy principle of Art. 5 EC and heavily characterised by national regulations that lead to significant price differentials between – generally speaking – Northern and Southern Europe. This incites the activity of parallel traders in the first place, who act as arbitrageurs.

The aim of this thesis is to map important strategies and factors that a firm, in this case Gunnebo Lifting AB can use when establishing themselves at the Russian market. The Russian market is today considered to be an emerging market. Within this study several areas of theory connected to entering new markets have been touched upon. These areas are market analysis, relationships and networking, internationalization processes, distribution chains, export issues and finally cultural distances. The empirical data for this thesis were collected through qualitative interviews.The results that arose when analyzing the theories combined with the empirical data pointed towards five strategies and factors of importance.

Organisation and market orientation of elderly careThis comparative literature study is intended to describe how elderly care is organised and financed in Germany and Sweden. Furthermore, it analyses the degree of competition and market orientation in both countries' care systems. Important aspects in this context are the kinds of measurements which are used on the two markets and the question if there are quasimarkets.The theoretical backgrounds of the study are Esping-Andersen's "Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism" and Harold Wilensky's convergence theory. Esping-Andersen's theory describes Sweden as a social democratic and Germany as a conservative welfare regime which means that there are different conditions for the development of welfare. The use of Wilensky's theory shows that both welfare systems are converging since the end of the 20th century.

Background: As a result of the financial markets ever ongoing product innovation a new derivative was introduced in the USA in 1997. A derivative that derived it's value, not from the price of an underlying asset, but instead from a climate factor. It's been known for a long time that revenue in certain industries are affected by weather conditions. The suppliers of weather derivatives claim that these weather sensitive businesses can user weather derivatives in order to lessen weather risk. Purpose: To do a critical evaluation of how weather derivatives can be used by companies as a risk management tool.

The current research examined whether motives, traditional mass media consumption and individual differences (social activity and political interest) predicted the use of social media among a group of university students in China. In coherence with Uses and Gratifications assumptions the study found that the factors differentially predicted the extent of media use. Information seeking, social interaction and affinity were the main reasons for using social media. There was a negative correlation between television viewing and use of social media, in addition to a negative correlation between information seeking and use of the media. Results further suggest that social media are used to enhance social capital, since student?s being socially active offline, tend to use the media to a greater extent than those less active..

In the era of urbanization and globalization, many small, rural and post-industrialcities struggle for growth. The competition for citizens and visitors is intense, andone commonly used strategy is to promote the city to a target audience. Placemarketing, however, is homogenized to a great extent. Marketing thus seems likea useless approach, yet almost every city does it.By using discourse analysis and institutional theory, this essay aims to explainwhy the city of Kramfors markets itself. There are several problems arising due tothe marketing of places, especially concerning the discrepancy between the city?simage and identity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze past development of mutual funds in large and small mutual fund companies and see if there are any differences between these two segments. Limitations on the number of funds have been made by choosing Nordic mutual fund companies that invest in emerging markets over an 11-year period. The study is made on 66 mutual funds managed by 13 mutual fund companies in which the segment of small fund companies includes seven fund companies with assets under management less than 100 billion SEK and the segment of large mutual fund companies includes six fund companies with assets under management more than 400 billion SEK. In the comparison of the segments the Sharpe ratio has been used to calculate the risk-adjusted return. The study shows small differences of the risk-adjusted return between the segments.

Purpose/aim: The purpose of this thesis is to examine if, and in that case how, the municipality of Umeå worked strategically with its communication during 2014 when Umeå was chosen as ?European Capital of Culture?. The research is mainly focused on the outlines of their communication plan, main goals, what  communication strategies the municipality has chosen to and their choice of media channels.Material/method: Two methods are used for this research; qualitative interviews with four employees within the communication team during Umeå2014 and a text analysis of three formal documents which provide the framework of communication policies and media strategies during Umeå2014.Results: The results clearly indicate a well structured, strategic planning outlined in the formal documents. The four people intreviewed all had a good knowledge of the policies and strategies in the documents, they also described their work in accordance with these..

The DuPont formula is one of the most well known and basic tools used for financial statement analysis and is highly useful for understanding firms strategies and operating environment. Previous studies on American listed companies have also shown that analysis of the changes in the DuPont components is useful in forecasting contexts. In this thesis we test whether disaggregating the change in return on net operating assets provides incremental information about future performance for Swedish listed and not listed companies. We find that the change in asset turnover is a leading indicator of increased profitability for both listed and private companies, regardless of size. We also find evidence that the usefulness of the disaggregation for understanding future performance is greater in capital intense industries and lesser in service industries..

Parallel import in the European Union is the perfectly legal activity under Art. 28-30 EC of buying goods in a low-price country in order to ship and sell them in a high-price country. The pharmaceutical market in Europe is subject to the subsidiartiy principle of Art. 5 EC and heavily characterised by national regulations that lead to significant price differentials between ? generally speaking ? Northern and Southern Europe.

In this thesis, the conditions of using the maintenance method live work at the Swedish TSO, Svenska Kraftnät has been analyzed. The study is limited to only include live work on 220 and 400 kV. The live work method is a type of maintenance that can be done, on lines or stations, even though they are still energized. The purpose of this thesis has been to map the present live work situation at these levels in Sweden. The study is based mostly on interviews with people who have specific field competence with in live work but also with personnel at Svenska Kraftnät.