The aim of this essay is to study the development of democracy in the Halland province, with focus on participating measures. First and foremost to test earlier research about the causes of the development of democracy, which says that the work takes place with obvious variation between the municipalities and that it is caused by economic resources and experienced problems in the democracy. The purpose is also to conduct a general discussion about the conditions and effects of the development.Thus the method can be characterised as theory consuming because I as far as possible assume the method that has been used in earlier research. Still, my study is limited to the six municipalities of the Halland province and is therefore a study of few cases. One person in each municipality has been interviewed in order to collect a list of all the measures that have been carried out.

Previous research does not show a clear picture of the perception of personalized advertising as studies give different results - there are both positive and negative aspects. The purpose of this study is to improve the knowledge and understanding of the impact of personalized advertising in the new Internet era. The aim is to answer whether personalized advertising has more positive than negative effects on Facebook or if marketers today should rethink regarding this issue. An experiment with three advertisements was defined where one ad was with no personal targeted content and the other two included personally targeted content. These ads were analysed with the theories word of mouth, information overload and psychological ownership to see if interesting results could be found regarding ad attitude, click intention and purchase intention as well as to investigate if the attitude to Facebook could have an impact on the results.

This study examines regional integration in Africa with a focus on the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, COMESA. COMESA, with roots that go back to the beginning of the 1980?s, is one of the largest and most diverse areas for regional integration in Africa and has currently 19 member countries. The goal of the COMESA co-operation is to become a fully integrated area by the year 2025 that will merge into the African Union (AU). AU will then, in turn, create a fully integrated African continent in a not too far away future.

A problem in the field of district heating is the oil burners needed to provide power when a peak load occurs. One possible way of reducing the needed amount of oil is to reduce the power demand for space heating in the district-heating substations when the need for district heating water exceeds a certain limit. This can be done by use of a locally working controller function.In this Thesis the options concerning load priority are evaluated. To evaluate the potential for using controller functions concerning peak load priority an experiment was brought out in a chosen district-heating substation. The impact on the indoor thermal comfort during a heat reduction was also taken into account.

The end of the 20th century brought a dramatic change to the music industry. The then predominant models for music consumption and sales were forever altered when the possibility to distribute music over the internet emerged. It has now become evident that it is virtually impossible to stop the distribution of digital music files. Music has turned into a non-excludable and non-rival product, which in economic terms is described as a public good. Public goods theory serves as a starting point for this study, which explores some of the factors that might explain why some consumers pay for music, while others choose to download music illegally.

This study examines how farmers certified by KRAV face proposed regulations on organic soils put forward by KRAV economic association among others, and how they are affected economically. These soils are, from an environmental perspective, interesting as a target for production regulations as they cause greenhouse gas emissions through decomposition of organic material when cultivated. The regulations advocate that organic soils should be grown with pasture where soil cultivation is only allowed every fith year which implies that possible adjustments of cultivation have to be made in order to fulfill the regualtions. Collection of data have been made through a questionnaire sent out to 574 farmers certified by KRAV. The answers have been analysed using a decision making model and statistical findings suggest that proportion of organic soils, type of production, economic conditions and farmers? goals and values have an influence on whether the regulations and potential cultivation adjustments have been considered or not.

AbstractToday there is an opportunity to reinforce concrete with steel fiber reinforcement. In some cases, completely replace the conventional reinforcement. Replacing conventional mesh reinforcement with steel fiber reinforcement in slabs on ground has shown economic benefits, less crack width and less reinforcement amount.Today there are no Swedish standard for designing steel fiber reinforced concrete, what is there is different international recommendations.In this work, design methods for steel fiber concrete are used according to RILEM and Bekaer Swedish AB's software DRAPRO. For other design methods Eurokod 2 is followed.In this work, the design of slabs on ground that are not exposed by large tension strength been designed. Design of crack-reinforcement and restrictions of crack width have been conducted in three different slabs on ground.The calculations have been performed using only conventional reinforcement and only steel fiber reinforcement, and the results are then compared.The results of the theoretical analysis are summarized in tables that compare the amount of reinforcement, crack width and economic cost.This work showed that the slabs on the ground reinforced with steel fibers provide less crack width with a minor amount of reinforcement.

Denna uppsats är skriven inom det nationalekonomiska fältet kulturekonomi och behandlar faktorer som påverkar antalet museibesökare och konsekvenserna av införandet av fri entré. År 2005 genomfördes en reform som medförde att ett flertal statliga museer införde fri entré (vissa museer redan våren 2004). Eftersom inträdesavgifter är en faktor som styrande lyfter fram som en viktig förklarande faktor till antalet och sammansättningen av museibesökare har frientréreformen och dess samhällsekonomiska konsekvenser en central roll i uppsatsen. Utifrån ett datamaterial från Kulturrådet och Statistiska Centralbyrån genomförs två multipla linjära regressioner, en per år samt en över tiden. I dessa regressioner testas olika förklarande variabler som kan tänkas ha en påverkan på antalet museibesökare.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has captivated global attention due to its astonishing economic growth. This development has resulted in an enormous growth in foreign direct investments, as well as the country?s new role aseconomic super power. When joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, China agreed to adhere to the minimum requirements of the organization?s several multilateral agreements.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect that price has on quality expectations and customer satisfaction and how price fits into a customer satisfaction model. An experiment in which participants are subject to scenarios of a high or low quality flight are used to test the hypotheses. The analysis shows that perceived quality has a bigger impact on satisfaction than price. Furthermore, price and quality do not affect customer satisfaction independently of each other. The importance of value compared to quality changes whether the actor is a high or low price actor.

Denna uppsats undersöker effekterna av första generationens biobränslen, såsom bioetanol och biodiesel, på jordbruksprodukters prisnivåer både inom länder och internationellt ? samt dessa prisers vidare påverkan på svält i utvecklingsländer. En enkel sektormodell för utbud och efterfrågan, uppdelad i tre delmarknader, utnyttjas först för att illustrera och förklara biobränslens grundläggande kvalitativa priseffekter på jordbruksmarknader. Andra forskningsstudiers och modellers kvantitativa uppskattningar av samma skeenden granskas och vidareutvecklas. Den relativa andel hos senare tids prisstegringar (den så kallade ?matkrisen?), vilken kan tillskrivas biobränslens effekter, skattas med försiktighet: min uppskattning blir att i storleksordningen 10 procent av de samtida prisökningarna beror på biobränslen, med viss variation för enskilda produkter.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how investments are justified in the Swedish data center industry, with a focus on cooling equipment. This is achieved through semi-structured interviews with 20 different interviewees. These interviewees represent different facets of the industry and facilitate an understanding of which factors, such as: investment costs, operating costs, reliability, environmental impact and the influence of external and internal actors, come into play and to which degree they impact the investment decision-making process. The results show that primarily low operating cost in the form of low energy consumption is the driving factor when it comes to the procurement of new equipment. A lower environmental impact is a positive side-effect of lower energy consumption.

This essay is a study of the motives and driving forces affecting how a food producer looks at, and incorporates, an environmental-labeling and its impact on their organization and strategy. Driving forces and motivations is an important part of a business strategy and impacts its content and its expression. Sustainability can be part of the overall company strategy but could also define the entire company. This study has shown that the main motive for working with eco-labelling is a genuine interest in issues concerning sustainability. This creates an opportunity for the company to communicate their environmental policies to their customers. For a company that works proactive and innovative with sustainability and climate issues, the new climate framework does not mean any major organizational or strategic changes.When the framework is incorporated in the organization the farms need to be analyzed with a climate impact perspective. This essay shows that this process, together with tools developed to handle the framework, make change in the way dairy farmers think and how they relate to their daily work..

Because of the increasing numbers of international tourist arrivals each year it is essential that tourist operators are aware of the impacts that tourism generate. Tourism affects the world in an environmental, social and economic way, positive but also in a negative way. To travel responsible and sustainable is therefore important, and operators have a responsibility in this subject.Because of this I wanted to look at how Swedish tourist operators manage responsible tourism, together with what amount of information their customers receive about this. To be able to study how operators work with this I conducted three interviews via email. The tourist operators were of different sizes and specializations to receive a more extensive result.

Utländska direktinvesteringar har ökat markant de senaste 10 åren, en utveckling som påverkar det dagliga livet för allt fler människor då företagens investeringar ger upphov till såväl nya blomstrande orter som nya ödebygder. Denna uppsats syftar till att på företagsnivå undersöka vad som påverkar val av geografisk plats för direktinvesteringar utomlands. I undersökningen har de faktorer som lyfts fram av den nya handelsteorin samt ekonomisk geografi undersökts. Dessa faktorer är tullar och andra handelshinder, transportkostnader, agglomerationseffekter, närhet till och storlek på marknader, positiva externaliteter samt skalfördelar. Hur viktiga dessa anledningar är har i denna uppsats undersökts genom en kvalitativ enkätmetod, där företagen själva har svarat på i vilken grad varje enskild anledning påverkat investeringsbeslutet.