Making accurate predictions of private consumption expenditures is a difficult task. This thesis examines if consumer confidence can be used to forecast consumption. Using regression analysis, the link between consumer confidence and private consumption expenditures is analyzed for Sweden between the years 1994 and 2005. Two different models are estimated. In the first model consumption is regressed only on consumer confidence, while model two is extended to contain more variables.

The prospect of Turkish accession to the EU has sparked controversy in many of the member countries. It has highlighted the different ways in which European as well as Turkish identity is being defined in the debate, with some politicians seemingly trying to draw on old prejudices in order to make the case against membership. By utilising discourse analysis as advocated by Thomas Diez, this thesis seeks to explore the debates regarding the Turkish accession bid in the British House of Commons. Its purpose is to analyse how ?EU? and ?Turkey?, understood as contested concepts, gets described in different ways.

The aim of this essay was to understand how teachers identify and deal with the problems surrounding economic vulnerability among their students.  A qualitative study method was conducted by seven semi-structured interviews with teachers from a big city in Sweden. When analyzing my result I found support in Goffman's stigma theory as well as in previous research. The teachers identify economic vulnerability amongst their students through their material belongings, when the class does something extraordinary, and through how the students communicate. Problems that the teachers can see in the classroom for economically disadvantaged students are that they can be aggressive, unruly and become introverted. Problems with studies and shoplifting are also common.

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.

As well as other politic fields, the cultural politics adapt to changes in society. The development in society has brought attention to the interaction between the cultural field and the economic field. One of the main goals within Swedish Cultural Policies today is the development of cultural and creative economics. Politicians and researchers claim that culture can be a significant part in economic growth in cities and making a place attractive to live in.I became interested in the discussion around the cultural experience as a factor of economic growth when I participated in a seminar at Karlstad CCC during Kulturparlamentet 2012. When I then started working at the music festival Putte i Parken during the spring of 2013 I thought about making this study.The main aim is to investigate in which way Putte i Parken can be a factor of growth and a factor of making Karlstad an attractive place to live in by analyzing documents, reports and literature in a qualitative way of working.

The aim of this study is to examine a number of Swedish working public librarians and compare them with some popular standard images of librarians. In this project we have been working in line with these three questions: How do the librarians describe themselves and how can the descriptions be interpreted? What images are the most common and repetitive, according to earlier research? What differences and similarities are there between the images of the librarians and the working librarians? To answer the questions we have performed seven qualitative interviews with working librarians and collected relevant literature that presents various portrayals of librarians. To interpret the interviews we have used Pierre Bourdieus theories of social space, social fields, habitus and the cultural, academic, social and the economic capitals, as well as the connection between individual taste, class and social power. The conclusions of the collected material of earlier research and the interpreted material from the interviews have been compared and discussed.

Colombia är ett land med en över 40 årig lång internkonflikt vilket har bidragit till att en avsevärd del av landets befolkning tvingats fly och lämna sina hem. De allra flesta flyr inte över Colombias gränser till andra länder, utan stannar i landet och blir internflyktingar. Tanken bakom denna uppsats är att undersöka problematiken kring dessa internflyktingar och om de omfattas av principerna om mänskliga rättigheter och om de har möjligheten att utnyttja dessa rättigheter. Hannah Arendts syn på medborgarskap används som grund för att beskriva internflyktingarnas situation i förhållande till mänskliga rättighetsargumenten. Hur internflyktingen påverkas socialt av tvångsmigrationen tas också upp vilket jag kopplar samman med Egon F.

The thesis investigates how two of the world?s most powerful international actors, the US and the EU want to promote democracy and human rights. The aim is to compare how the US and the EU work in order to support a democratic development in the world. In order to fulfill the purpose of the thesis a qualitative text analysis was used. Since the aim is to compare the US and the EU I believe this method is beneficial.

Suicide research has a long tradition within sociology. Parallel to the Durkheimian tradition, seeking the causes of suicide in societal factors, a more cultural understanding of suicide has been emphasized. Attitudes to suicide have been stressed as important for the understanding of suicide mortality levels in different societies. For Russia, where suicide mortality levels are among the highest in the world, an understanding of this kind might be of particular importance.Based on a survey study from Moscow 2004, attitudes to suicide were studied in relation to social, economic and demographic factors as well as to attitudes to other morally disputable behaviors. Suicide attitudes in different age and sex groups in the sample were further compared to suicide mortality levels in the corresponding groups in the population.

It is estimated that approximately 10 000 people are living in Sweden after having been rejected residence permit or asylum, meaning that they have to hide from the authorities while facing a risk of being deported by means of violence as they do not wish to leave voluntarily.For their existence, a vast number of people employed by the public administration can be expected to contribute to the wellbeing of the hidden people through their professions as bureaucrats.The bureaucrats can thereby be expected to be torn between different sets of value systems, roles and obligations towards the state and towards the hidden people.In this master thesis, I examine how five bureaucrats motivate their acting for the sake of the hidden people in terms of legitimacy, legality and morality in their administration, towards their ethic responsibilities and towards society as a whole.The results show that the bureaucrats see themselves as saviours of ethical values in an illegitimate administration where economic efficacy and arbitrary decision-making constantly transgresses The Human Rights, ratified by the Swedish Parliament..

The research of the essay will be about Solidarity, the Polish trade union that began to rise in the beginning of 1980. In more specific tendencies to the empirical study, it is interesting getting to know about when the free trade union was created with a view to liberate the Polish people from Communism.The essay will be studied as an empirical case study, with a qualitative text analysis. The content will also include how power is allocated to the political, economic and social aspects of the national, and international relations. Therefore it will be relevant to use a method of ideology analysis to the qualitative text.The result of the theoretical analysis was that it is difficult to apply the social movements into a political change, even if it leads to success. According to this, participants in social movements are able to use the most potential and most necessities of resources, just as activists tend to do in reality..

The topic of this master thesis in legal science is state law and constitutional law, or more specific judicalization, with the division of power and thus increased individual legal rights in various forms. Sweden has traditionally had a weak constitutional protection for the individual?s legal rights. The public power has been concentrated to the government and the courts have only played a marginal role. Since the implementation of the European convention of legal rights and with the ever-increasing importance of the legal system of the European Union, the Swedish legal system gone through changes of historical dimensions.This master thesis is based on the legal dogmatic method where laws, preparatory work, case law and doctrines have been systemized.

Denna uppsats analyserar matchningseffektiviteten mellan lediga jobb (vakanser) och arbetslösa. Det faktum att den svenska Beveridgekurvan skiftat utåt under 1990-talet är en indikation på att de arbetslösa inte lika effektivt ?matchas? ihop med de lediga jobb som skapas. I uppsatsen identifieras två faktorer som påverkar matchningseffektiviteten; sökbeteendet hos arbetsgivarna och de arbetslösa, samt regionala obalanser mellan utbud och efterfrågan på arbetskraft. Sammanfattningsvis kan sägas att båda faktorerna tycks bidragit till sämre matchningseffektivitet under 1990-talet..

This thesis investigates the 200 year old phenomena of savings banks and if they increase the economic growth (GDP) in the local region they act in. That is being done by testing three hypotheses; the savings banks increase the attractiveness of the region they act in; the savings banks increase the entrepreneurship in the region they act in; and the savings banks increase the economic growth in region they act in. This quantitative cross-sectional study with data from the year 2010, finds that the savings banks increase the attractiveness of the local region, most likely through the efforts and financials they put into different local projects. A positive result is also found for increased entrepreneurship in the regions that have a local savings bank. The result is explained by the savings banks relationship lending, which increase the likeliness for a company to get the credit they need to start and develop.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka huruvida BNP-gap kan förutspåinflationen bättre jämfört med arbetslöshetsgap. Svensk kvartalsdata från1993 till och med 2005 har använts. Gapmåtten skapas med två olika metoder,en linjärregression och ett HP-filter. En direkt prognosmodell används föralla prognoser med out of sample metodik. Prognoshorisonterna somanvänds är ett kvartal, fyra kvartal samt åtta kvartal.