Over the last decade, the private insurance market has undergone a stable growth in turnover and growing demand for insurance products in all Member States of the European Union. Therefore, the creation of a single market in insurance will enable consumers to have access to wider choice of insurance products, and insurance companies to gain access to markets in various Member States and compete effectively. The EU legal framework for the insurance industry embraces the Treaty freedoms of services, establishment and capital, the EC Directives and the ECJ case-law. The present thesis identifies numerous factors that hinder the Community insurance market integration and offers possible remedies. The summary of the market obstacles is all-inclusive and reflects the responses to the questionnaires and the Commission surveys.

One could argue that the most discussed topic in finance is whether or not it is possible to ?beat the market?. Even though many people claim to do this, there is little evidence to support the idea that one can consistently beat the market over a long period of time. There are indeed several examples of investors who have managed to outperform the market consistently for a long time, but the efforts of these individuals or institutions could by many be considered to be pure luck.One of the many strategies that have been evaluated by several researchers and is said to generate a risk adjusted return greater than that of the market, is one based on the P/E-effect. This strategy is based on the financial ratio P/E ? price divided by earnings ? and used by constructing portfolios consisting of stocks with low P/E ratios.

Stump biomass is energy rich and stump harvesting for use as fuel become more and more interesting in Sweden. Swedish Forest Agency (2009) has estimated that stump harvesting in Sweden would respond to an annual energy supply of 57 TWh/year. However, stump has not been recognized as a bioenergy resource in Sweden. Suitable methods for pre-treatment of stump are probably of great importance to make it accepted as fuel. It is therefore rewarding to carry out an investigation in this area for stump. This report represents results from a diploma project, which was aimed to develop a fixed bed reactor for experimental study of biomass torrefaction, followed by TG analysis and kinetic modelling employing Ozawa method and different kinetic models including one-step and three-pseudo-component models.

AbstractThe purpose of this essay is to investigate the priority rules in the event of termination due to redundancy, the rules functions according to the Swedish labour market and which other alternatives that exist besides the priority rules. The alternatives to the priority rules which are introduced in the essay are the Danish Flexicurity-model and a proposal from the Långtidsutredningen 2011. The rule of priority is a very controversial law at the Swedish labour market, which makes the essay also describing the criticism against the rules. The criticism that the essay presents claims that the rules of priority contribute to immobility effects for particularly older employees. Further on the essay presents the criticism towards the rules, that they disadvantage young employees on the labour market.  The essay investigates also what the researchers say about the criticism.The results that are presented in the essay points to the fact that the rules of priority contributes to the immobility effects of employees but the rules can not be claimed to be the only reason.

When drivers overnight in the truck lots of electric energy is consumed by heaters, fans, lights and other extra equipment. If the engine is not running, this energy is taken from the lead/acid batteries of the truck which then needs to be recharged during operating hours. The fact that the charge acceptance of the lead/acid batteries is dependent on the temperature makes it hard to fully recharge the batteries at lower temperatures. A negative charge balance can lead to starting problems within a few days use in cold climate.In this thesis work, the effects of different battery charging concept are evaluated on the most common Scania battery (175Ah). A battery model is implemented in Matlab and some simulations of charging are made.

In the current situation in the housing market and in particular the inner city much attention is directed towards achieved prices per square meter in sales. The indicator is as a principle an appropriate measure of the housing market?s health and development, and can to some extent be used to make approximations of the general economic health status of municipalities and counties. It occurs occasionally that questions about whether prices are based on fundamentals at all times.The thesis questions that very issue, not from a macro accompanying financial perspective but rather from a microeconomic perspective, where each tenant ownership in the study is a micro-object. Are the observed prices per square meter rational relative to housing cooperative?s assets or is there a lack in the observed prices anchoring the respective association's finances.

The company Olofsfors AB manufactures drive belts for forest machinery, known as ECO-Tracks, and abrasion-resistant steel and cutting edges for graders, excavators and tractors, known as Bruxite and SharqEdges. Manufacturing these products requires the steel to be heated and molded, then submerged in water and hardened. The water used in the hardening of steel is pumped to the process from pits below the floor and then pumped back to the pit after it?s been used. Since the temperature of this water rises after being used to harden the steel the temperature of the pumping pit needs to be adjusted to maintain its setpoint of 21°C.

Many organizational changes have been accomplished in elder care since the 1980's and many of those have been influenced by market mechanisms. The purpose of this study is to examine how the implementation of these market mechanisms has affected three important aspects in the work situation for personnel. These aspects are, demand, control and support. To attain the purpose of this study, five qualitative interviews with home care personnel have been carried out. The interview material has been analyzed and structured with the help of Karasek and Theorells demand-control-support model.

This paper studies the option market?s implied dividend as a predictor of future equity market returns. We introduce this variable in the simple total return framework and discuss some complications of using it as a proxy for the expected dividend. We construct some regressions using the price-dividend ratio and the implied dividend growth, and test them on six years worth of data on the EURO STOXX 50-index. The main result is that implied dividend growth exhibits some forecastability over two-year horizons, but that the dataset is too short to draw any definitive conclusions about long-horizon forecastability.

BackgroundAccording to the Swedish Statistics Central Office (SCB) there were 2 064 000 detached houses in Sweden in 2009. The same year Nordea Bank released a report which described an increased interest in private finances among 2,4 million Swedes. Within the area of private finances lies that which concerns real estate. We argue that a house (detached house) is one of the most financially valuable assets a person will ever own and thus the increased interest in private finance is justified.In regard to this, the financial valuation of the property becomes an issue. When discussed, people mostly refer to the market value, which is the estimated value of the property on the open market.

As more and more book publishers are starting up in Sweden, despite of tough competition, this thesis aims to understand the necessary resources required by new publishing houses in order to create a long-term role on the national publishing market. This is a market characterized by a high level of cultural interests, where success is not always measured in economic profit. Four new publishing houses have been chosen, whose start-up phases and entry processes are described in order to determine what factors have been essential in creating a role. In addition, relevant actors such as other publishers, distributors, and retailers have been interviewed with the purpose of acquiring the complete picture of how the new publishers? can create a role within the industry.

The SMEs’ internationalization strategy—Foreign Market Entry Modes selection Title: 1st of June 2006 Date of the Seminar: Bus 809. Master thesis in international marketing Course: Han xiao Author: Ulf Elg, Associate professor, Lund University, Sweden Advisors: Ying Bin, Associate professor, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, China. Guest researcher, Lund University, Sweden Internationalization, entry mode, SMEs, foreign market Keywords: The purpose of this study is to understand the internationalization process of the SMEs, and try to define the motives and internal factors impact their foreign market entry mode selection. Thesis purpose: This thesis is based on qualitative method using case study. The primary information sources are the interviews with key-persons in internationalization process of SMEs Methodology: The literature review in this study concerns areas of SMEs’ motives for internationalization, foreign market entry mode approaches and influence of internal & external factors.

Lots of choices are to be made by a company who enters a new market with a new businessidea. Common questions that show up when a company is making it´s businessplan are how to target the market and how to use marketing as a tool to reach a specific customer or segment. It is difficult to know wether to target the market in different ways and what processes that can be used in the choice how to select the most potential and profitable customer. Another important question is how a company can positioning themself in a way so the customer will get a positive understanding of the company and what different positive abilities to mention in a possible businessproposal. This study is made on a small company in Sweden called AYEN Technology.

One of the areas in which current theory on entrepreneurship is ambiguous is in the explanation of how entrepreneurs act when entering a new market. One author that has attempted to contribute in this area is Saras D. Sarasvathy who has tried to explain the entrepreneurs reasoning through the theory of causation and effectuation. The former refers to a reasoning that takes the effect of an entrepreneurial action as given, while the latter looks upon the effects as uncertain, while only the means are given. With a foundation in this theory, Sarasvathy claims that when entrepreneurs enters a new market the level of environmental uncertainty is so high that reasoning based on causal relationships is rendered useless.

The aim of this paper is to research and discuss the role the cultural politics play for the Swedish employment office (Arbetsförmedlingen) and the meaning culture politics have within the labour market policy. A research has shown that Arbetsförmedlingen evaluates unemployed cultural workers differently than regular registered jobseekers. From an instrumental perspective on political implementation this can be considered as an anomali. Arbetsförmedlingen?s mandate derives from the government and its authority is a tool for carrying out state policy.