Research and Development-costs constitutes an important part in contemporary companies. R&D are treated differently depending on their definition and how the historic value is decided. The main goal for this essay is to bring clarity to how the definiton of the term R&D is decided in accounting as well as in tax law. Another goal is to decide how the historic value is calculated. It is also interesting to examine under which circumstances the costs can be activated in the balance sheet, and under which circumstances deduction for the R&D-costs may be allowed.

The main purpose of this bachelor thesis is to create a product in the form of a database that can be used for cost estimates of equipment within bio refineries. Through interviews and literature searches the key components and their costs were identified. The database was constructed in Microsoft Excel with different tabs for different categories of components; these tabs are further divided into three parts: one part with costs, one part with calculations and an information part. Most of the part with costs contains the expenses found in scientific papers during the literature study, the calculating part converts different capacities according to user preferences and the currency to euro (?) from 2010 and the information part consists of references and information about what is included in the cost.The database is a good tool for making cost estimates for bio refineries.

This study investigates a method for identifying human capital and its effect on company valuation. We devise a measure for the efficiency of human capital based on the personnel cost. We include all companies listed in the financial and industry sector on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm in an attempt to examine human capital and its effect on firm valuation. Our results indicate that a higher efficiency of human capital has a positive effect on return on assets. However, we find that our measure can be interpreted in two ways; either as a firm?s level of human capital efficiency or its dependency on human capital, to achieve its net sales and revenue.

The purpose of this thesis is to map out and investigate how the banking sector affects a customer?s willingness to change bank, and what the switching costs are for a customer when making these changes. A case study was performed through qualitative and quantitative questionnaires and interviews. The qualitative part was carried out to create hypotheses. The hypotheses was tested in a quantitative survey to be able to either accepted or rejected these them.

Background: Nosocomial infections pose a big threat to patient safety and increased costs for society. An effective way of preventing cross-infections is to apply hygiene routines. Studies show that compliance to hygiene routines is low while there's a lack of knowledge about the best way of improving it. Aim: To investigate whether a conversation based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) could influence a nurse's compliance to hygiene routines and whether it could benefit the understanding of a nurse's compliance. Method: A quantitative and qualitative method was used in the study and included one nurse.

This Master's thesis work was done at SLU, Uppsala, Sweden in cooperation with Upplandsstiftelsen and Uppsala County Council. The studied area is pointed out as an area for EU´s LIFE project, NATURA 2000, concerning the Scarabid beetle Osmoderma eremita. The studied area lies in an agricultural landscape rich on deciduous trees, about 15 km south of Enköping in the County of Uppland. The species is dependent on large, old, hollow trees, which are exposed to sunlight, usually oak trees in this area. I studied the area in detail concerning large old trees (>70cm ø), middle-aged oak trees and young oak trees.

The projects objective is to find an alternative method of heating (the current method being via electric heating) the sewage treatment plant on the island Utö in Stockholm?s archipelago in order to reduce the energy consumption and ultimately the cost for heating the plant. The project is given by ?Skärgårdsstiftelsen? (The Archipelago Foundation) and is a part of the larger EU-project ?Green Islands?.A model for the plants total heating demand is established in order to get a good perception of how much money can be saved using alternative heating methods. The heating demand model gives an annual heating demand of approximately 32 500 kWh and a maximum heating power demand of around 24,7 kW.

The technological development and increasing popularity for integrated multichannel solutions constitutes both severe opportunities and challenges for todays' and tomorrows' retailers. On the account of consumers leaving traces when using digital channels and the technological development enabling retailers to use this information to create relevant offers, goal-congruity is relevant to apply in the multichannel shopping context. Based upon previous research on goal congruity and channel integration, our main purpose in this study is to increase the understanding for how congruity in an offer increases the intention to redeem the offer. Several studies focus on and contrast the product characteristics hedonic and utilitarian. However, it has been stated that it is crucial that research also examines the difference in target audience, buying situation and as examined in this study: buying decision process.

This paper investigates the internal product costing system in one of the Swedish banks with the purpose to evaluate the quality of its product costs and possible implications on decision making. The study shows that the current system distorts product costs by, among other things, using relative allocation of costs and time and by allocating all costs to individual units of products. We therefore propose an alternative product costing system, which mainly draws on ABC theory but is also adapted to the specific needs of service companies and of the Bank. This proposal is intended as a solution in this particular case and not to be generalized in other contexts. We hope however to add to the understanding of why more complex costing systems, such as the ones based on ABC theory are, according to previous studies, not widely used in practice.

A reforming trend is captured showing that countries are shifting from defined benefit pension systems towards defined contribution systems. The reforms have been justified through predictions that the defined benefit systems will not manage to provide good enough pensions to members in the future. The newer defined contribution pension plans often include individual financial accounts where individuals have the possibility to choose how a part of their pension savings should be invested. Sweden was early to introduce such a system, which at the moment provides more than 800 funds to choose from. The aim of this thesis is to capture the market risk associated with these individual investments and does so by using Monte Carlo simulations for six selected pension funds.

In Sweden, the demand for bio energy has increased in recent years due to the current energy and climate debate. In 2008, the energy supply of Sweden was 612 TWh, biofuels accounted for 123 TWh of these. Stumps have been highlighted as a potential fuel in recent years and the Swedish Forest Agency expects a technically and biologically feasible potential of 20.7 TWh annually between 2010 and 2019. The idea of utilize stumps is not new. During the 19th century stumps were used for tar production and during the 70?s and 80?s attempts were made to use stumps in the pulp industry.

The background for my thesis is the fact that with rising electricity and oil prices it becomes interesting to calculate on alternative heating systems. I have chosen to calculate upon my parents? farm, which today heats the dwelling house with wood. This is very time-consuming work, time which could be spent on other work. The main objective for this study is to compare three different heating systems to decide how they differ considering effort and cost. The result from the calculations was that grain-heating system demanded the least amount of work, but the total cost was a little higher compared to chips heating. Chips heating required half as much work as today?s wood heating and had a little lower total costs compared with the corn heating. Which system to choose largely depends on how the own work is valued.

The main goal with this thesis report was to come up with ideas of how to make the use of energy more effective and thus save money for the company.First a survey was made to find out where and how the energy consumers were divided within the company. The results were then used in calculations to find out how much money that could be saved and how long it would take to get back the investments.There is a big potential in saving money by recovering heat from the UV-lamps with a heat exchanger. It would also even out the pressure in the factory which is a source to heat loss and a cause for discomfort amongst the employees. It?s possible to save 105 000 kr in a year and the money needed for the investments is 600 000 kr.By using the recovery air more effectively the company could save up to 250 000 kr a year in lowered heat purchases, but this would require the use of automatic dampers.If you reschedule the running times for the wood chipper and invest in some kind of load management, for example Sydkraft?s ?Energidirigent? you can save at least 42 000 kr.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the work situation for temporary workers within the field of journalism. During the past decade, influential external forces such as commercialization, new technologies and increased competition have brought great changes within the industry. As a result, employers value flexibility of manpower, not least to reduce cost, where the flexible employee is usually leased by the media company from a manpower company. Today it is a normal practice with manpower companies and this way of hourly paid form of employment. Although the temporary worker can sometimes benefit from this kind of employment, there are also significant setbacks like job insecurity.

Distributed, renewable generation-units and more efficient use of electric power,demands a developed electric grid. This grid is often referred to as the ?Smart Grid?.This future electric system rise expectations among actors in the existing electricmarket. International organizations share visions of opportunities for electricityconsumers and new actors, ready to enter the market. At the same time, electricutility companies may question the need for some of these upcoming changes, as theyare sometimes expected to lead the development.This paper therefore seeks to investigate the business opportunities related to SmartGrids.