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.

Background to problem: Pensions play a big role in people's lives when life expectancy continues to increase. Companies can choose different ways of reporting their pension plans, and within the defined benefit pension plan poses the actuarial gains and losses that can be reported based on three different methods. Only one method will exist from 2013, how will the companies that use the other two handle the new situation?Purpose: Investigate why different companies have chosen to report its actuarial gains and losses along the corridor approach, directly against income or directly in equity. How will the companies that use the corridor method manage the situation when it will only be allowed to report in other comprehensive income as of 2013 and how will this affect them.Methodology: Data was collected through qualitative questionnaires sent to companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Nordic Stockholm, Large Cap and Mid Cap, and a qualitative interview.

The basis of road investments is to minimize the transportation cost. The forest industry wants roundwood to be available during the whole year. One way of determine which road to invest in is to do a cost/benefit calculation. SCA Forest lacks a uniform approach to determine the utility of a road investment. The goal of this report is to describe how the organization works today and find areas of improvement. The data collection was done through interviews.

AbstractAuthors:Stefan Harrå and Magnus BjörkAdvisor: Markku PenttinenTitle: Accounting Consequences of the change in pension accounting Background to problem: When the revised IAS 19 comes into force January 1, 2013, it means that two of the three accounting principles for defined benefit pension plans are disappearing, including the corridor method. The corridor method has made it possible for companies to defer its actuarial gains and losses. Now that the corridor approach abolished then the unrecognized actuarial gains and losses immediately be covered by equity, which involves very large amounts of some companies. Why the amounts have grown so big is much because of the discount rate. The discount rate is a controversial parameter, and there is disagreement on how it should be fixed.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the accounting implications this will have for the company applied the corridor method, and if there is some parameters in the actuarial assumption that is more important than others.Methodology: The thesis has mainly been based on a qualitative research through qualitative interviews with a small sample that is affected by this change.

It has become increasingly simple for companies to offer its employees shares in the form of incentive or option plans to acquire.  Companies motivate incentive plans with employee buy-outs that it will lead to higher involvement of work. The offers are often associated with disposal restrictions to the employee such as not immediately dispose of shares or that the employees will have to remain of employment within a certain timeframe. The problems with disposal restrictions are that it makes it difficult to determine the point of taxation.When shares deemed acquired at the time of share subscription the benefit will be taxable as income from service and the increase in value income from capital. When shares are deemed to be acquired only after cessation of disposal restrictions this will result in that the benefit is taxed only once.After the Supreme Administrative Court rulings in 3167-09 and 3168-09, it is now obvious that the acquisition is deemed to occur at the time of acquisition. The problem is not yet solved because the constant development of the security market needs to be considered.

This essay focuses on how trafficking in human beings for sexual exploitation is defined and dealt with in the Nordic countries. Agreements on how trafficking for sexual exploitations should be dealt with is presented in reports and Action plans from the European Union and United nations amongst others. In this essay we will compare four national Action plans made by governments by Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway between 2005- 2011 to each other. Mainly we have been looking at similarities and differences in the different Action plans. The essay is based on Discourse theory and discursive struggle and we have been looking at similarities and differences in how trafficking is dealt with through language.

This essay concerns the interpretation of house plans in three-aisled longhouses and hall-buildings, in Scandinavia during Iron Age. Full scale house reconstructions need a better basis of interpretations to understand the patterns of roof supporting post holes in excavated house plans. This has led to the thesis, presented here, that the layout of house plans during Iron Age is based on geometrical proportions. In order to prove this, geometric house plans were applied and compared with excavated house plans in 11different case studies, including the fortification of Fyrkat Denmark. It was found that all house plans in the case studies indicate, that the geometrical proportions 1:2, 1:3 and 2:3 of a given circle must have been used for the basic layout of the roof supporting post holes, using a compass and a straightedge.

In this essay my aim is to examine how the term utanförskap is constructed and defined as a social problem in the public arena of the Swedish Parliament. The term utanförskap was widely used in the election-campaign prior to the Swedish Parliament election in the year 2006. The term, mainly articulated by the Right-wing Alliance, was used to describe indi-viduals and groups that were depicted as being outside the Swedish society. In the political debate, work and benefit dependency were constructed as binary opposites, with the latter describing the individuals in utanförskap. Translated to English the term utanförskap would be something like ?the state of being outside? or ?outsidership?.

The aim of this study is to see if the individual developing plans (i.e. individuella utvecklingsplaner) can be used as a tool for the special needs teacher (i.e. specialpedagog) to develop the school in its challenge to meet the needs of every child.  The study is based on contentanalycis and interviews, in order to understand how one school worked with the students´ individual developing plans.The results showed that the school did not use the plans as a tool to develop the education for each and every child, since the plans didn´t affect the tuition.The headmaster did not include the special needs teacher in the responsibility of developing the school.Even though our results showed that the school didn´t use the individual developing plans as a tool for the special educator to develop the school, we still found a possibility for developing the individual educational plans in the capacity of the special needs teacher. The study showed a need of dialogue in which teachers can reflect and problematize their actions and their teaching for the purpose of developing new understanding and new actions in the work with the individual educational plans. We believe that the profession of special needs teacher should supervise these dialogues..

The aim of this paper is to analyze how syllabus plans for the course Swedish for immigrants have changed in the past 40 years. The paper focuses mainly on how different theories on learning in general and second language acquisition in particular have influenced the syllabus. Furthermore, the paper attempts to identify changes in how the teachers? role is described in the documents. My results indicate that syllabus plans from the 70?s were influenced by behaviorism, progressivism and the sociocultural view on learning, while syllabus plans from the 90?s and 00?s show only influences from the two latter perspectives.

In 2011 the International Accounting Standards Board issued amendments to IAS 19 Employee Benefits. The new standard is effective from January 1st 2013 and one of the largest changes in the standard is the elimination of the corridor method. Through the corridor method companies had the possibility to defer actuarial gains and losses resulting from their defined benefit obligations (pension obligations) and leave them unrecognized off the balance sheet. According to the new standard companies reporting under International Financial Reporting Standards will have to recognize all actuarial gains and losses immediately in other comprehensive income. The aim of this thesis is to examine how the financial key ratios of Swedish listed companies will be affected by the elimination of the corridor method.

This essay aims to examine how safety is reflected in local plans. This was done by describing the physical environments, which are addressed in the local plans and its impact on safety. It has also been undertaken to see if certain physical environments with respect to safety have been addressed differently.The paper is made with the qualitative method Thematic analysis. The method is used to analyze the three local plans that have been available during the essay. The analysis was done with my created themes Traffic separation, Accessibility, High vision, Light and bright and Human presence.The results have shown that the local plans takes up physical environments that are good for safety.

This essay focuses on how trafficking is defined and dealt with in recent European policies,and particularly how prostitution take part of these discursive developments. Treaties andagreements on trafficking in human beings and for sexual exploitation have been made bythe European Union and United Nations amongst others, which have been signed andratified by the EU countries in Action Plans. In this essay, five national Actions Plans, fromAustria, Great Britain, Poland, Spain and Sweden between 2007 and 2009, have beencompared in order to see similarities and differences in how the phenomenon of traffickingis done through language. Based on Discourse theory and focus on discursive struggles, theresult show a hegemony around trafficking as a social issue in the Action Plans studied,exploiting humans, mainly children and women, sexually, but also how trafficking is framedas a problem of the nation state and the domestic labour market. It is also illustrated howdifferent meanings of prostitution make the trafficking discourse antagonistic and contested.Finally, the essay discusses the trafficking discourse in relation to EU strivings towardsharmonisation and power imbalances of migration and economy in Europe..

AbstractAuthors:Stefan Harrå and Magnus BjörkAdvisor: Markku PenttinenTitle: Accounting Consequences of the change in pension accounting Background to problem: When the revised IAS 19 comes into force January 1, 2013, it means that two of the three accounting principles for defined benefit pension plans are disappearing, including the corridor method. The corridor method has made it possible for companies to defer its actuarial gains and losses. Now that the corridor approach abolished then the unrecognized actuarial gains and losses immediately be covered by equity, which involves very large amounts of some companies. Why the amounts have grown so big is much because of the discount rate. The discount rate is a controversial parameter, and there is disagreement on how it should be fixed.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the accounting implications this will have for the company applied the corridor method, and if there is some parameters in the actuarial assumption that is more important than others.Methodology: The thesis has mainly been based on a qualitative research through qualitative interviews with a small sample that is affected by this change.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is a correlation between the actuarial assumptions, of listed groups in Large Cap on the Nasdaq Stockholm, equity ratio and their pensionplans funding status.Method: The study is based on a quantitative research method, where the analysis of annual reports takes place. The quantitative research method has enabled the paper to perform related analyzes and comparisons of means between groups, for listed companies equity ratio and pension obligation, and the relation to its actuarial assumptions. Correlation measurements are made using a non-parametric method, Spearman's rho, then further tested using one-sided hypotheses t-test.Theory: The backbone of the thesis is presented using two theories, earnings management and the principal-agent theory. These theories are intertwined with the previous researches, which also dealt with the essay topic of earnings management in previous years and in other countries.Empirical: Correlation analyzes between the studied actuarial assumptions and corporate groups solidity and pension financial status is presentedusing tables and charts. These are further analyzed using hypothesis tests and scatterplots.Conclusion: All tests resulted in very weak correlation between the different variables and can there for not be classified as significant.