Background and problem: The importance of banks was clearly shown during the last financial crises, when the crises that started in the banking sector spread to the rest of the world. This is one of the reasons that this thesis is focused on banks in particular, one other reason is that a lot of previous studies has chosen to exclude banks because of the fact that their balance sheet differ from non-financial companies. This thesis is a beginning in filling in the gap that exists in the knowledge of banks capital structure. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to prove that it is possible to explain the capital structure in banks and that differences in the capital structure of the banks in Great Britain, Sweden and the United states of America exists. Method: The fact that our study is partly a replication of two earlier studies made a deductive approach most appropriate.

I en värld där individer möts av mängder av ekonomiska begrepp och ekonomisk information dagligen har forskning visat att människor har svårt att engagera sig och ha den förståelse som krävs för att hantera sin egen privatekonomi. Begreppet ?Financial Literacy? nämns ofta som en förklaring till människors olika kunskapsnivå och förståelse. I människors yrkesmässiga roll tas denna förmåga ofta för given vara uppfylld. Denna uppsats har undersökt ekonomiska kunskaper och ekonomisk förståelse hos enskilda näringsidkare, en företagsform där privatekonomin och näringsverksamhetens ekonomi är nära sammankopplade.

This paper deals with the question: "Why does the U.S. aid project to cambat HIV/AIDS in Africa, called PEPFAR, use a strategy that has been shown to be couterproductive?" The author uses an anthropological approach, based on theory of "aid as a gift" inspired by work of Mauss and Stirrat& Henkel. The study demonstrates that the interests that lie behind PEPFAR have had a greater influence on the choice of strategy than the declared goals. It is concluded that evaluations of development assistance should focus as much on the background interests of the givers as the declared objectives..

Even if the main purpose is to decide if the companies profitability and financial position is a determining factor for its growth, the purpose is to determine if there are any differences between big and small companies in there economical positions then they grow, in the selected industry. This thesis is mainly a quantitative study. The selected industry for the study is extraction of turf. The financial measurement that most clearly differ the growing companies from the not growing companies or the companies that didn?t change there amount of employees was the returns of the companies own capital.

The aim of our study was to increase the awareness of the importance of implementation when a policy document is widely introduced. We wanted to examine how a political decision was implemented on different levels in a social care administration. We also wanted to examine the discretion related to the decision on different levels in the organisation, and if the work is followed up. The theoretical frame of reference in our study is Vedung?s implementation model and Lipsky?s theory about street-level bureaucrats.

This study is intended to study how the social worker in financial assistance relates to the social workers exercise of its authority, regarding the Social Services Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. In concerning how the social worker treats and handles the cases of their clients, but also what significancethe organization's policies and goals have on the social worker?s role and the formation of their professional identity. To answer these questions the study chose a qualitative approach. Because the purpose of this study is to investigate the social worker?s personal beliefs about their way of conducting social work.

Background: Sweden and the rest of the world went through the biggest financial crisis at the end of 2008 since the 1930s. The major Swedish banks have goodwill related to their acquisitions inside and outside Scandinavia. Swedbank, SEB and Nordea has acquired in the Baltic countries and Russia, however Handelsbanken has established itself in Great Britain. The crisis in the Baltic countries led that real wages fell, unemployment rose, real estate prices collapsed and the number of borrowers who had trouble repaying their loans increased rapidly. All this led to the problem of impairment of goodwill in the Swedish banks that had expanded rapidly in the Baltic countries.Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the application of IFRS 3 in Swedish banks before, during and after the financial crisis, and to investigate the low-downs in the four majorSwedish banks in 2006-2010.Completion: The study is primarily based on the case studies by the examination of the annual reports from all banks as well as evaluation of the interviews.The authors have chosen to makea strategic choice of a small number of cases through the concentration on the impairment of goodwill in the bank sector of Sweden.Results: The result of this study is that there are problems for banks in implementation of IFRS 3 in practice because of insufficient information in the banks' financial statements.Generous estimates used in the calculation of impairment testing.

Problem formulation? Are there any factors affecting the choice of marketing strategy?? What is it that determines the degree for the company to use a standardized or a adapt marketing strategy?? How profitable is Scania's marketing strategy in each country?Objective: The overall aim of this study is based on local adaptation and global standardization to compare the degree to which the company Scania chooses to adapt or standardize its marketing to the South American and Asian markets.We also aim to compare and describe any factors that affect the countries' differences in marketing strategies and to evaluate and measure the profitability of marketing strategies in each market.Methodology: The study is limited to Scania's marketing in the truck market in Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and Singapore from 2006 to 2010. In order to answer the study's problem formulation and purpose we have chosen to combine a qualitative and quantitative approach. Four interviews were conducted with marketing executives from Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia / Singapore and Sweden. We have also chosen to examine Scania's annual report and include figures on the market shares of Scania in the respective countries and the number of sold Scania truck which is then compared against the number of registered vehicles by country.

In recent years, awareness of the climate change has increased around the world. Environmental issues have been taking into consideration, both by individuals and companies. Therefore the demands for new environmental friendly technology have increased, also known as cleantech. To further establish and develop cleantech it requires capital. Venture capitalists have as well seen the potential.To increase the number of Venture capital investments in cleantech, it is important the investments generate good returns.

Even if the main purpose is to decide if the companies profitability and financial position is a determining factor for its growth, the purpose is to determine if there are any differences between big and small companies in there economical positions then they grow, in the selected industry. This thesis is mainly a quantitative study. The selected industry for the study is extraction of turf. The financial measurement that most clearly differ the growing companies from the not growing companies or the companies that didn?t change there amount of employees was the returns of the companies own capital. It was also the returns of the companies own capital there the main difference existed between the big and the small companies.

Purpose: Examine if there is a connection between the athletic performance and the financial status in football clubs.Theoretical perspectives: This thesis is based on the theory that the modern football club is like every other company trying to maximize profit. The clubs should therefore use the same business strategies.Empirical foundation: The study is based on 25 observations over five years and five Allsvenska football clubs. The data is a compilation of the key ratios from the annual reports and the league table, years 2004 through 2008 in the clubs. Year 2009?s league table place is also included since tests have been done with one year?s displacement between the financial status and the league table.Conclusion:There is no correlation between solidity and the place in the league table in Allsvenska football clubs.There is no correlation between net profit and the place in the league table in Allsvenska football clubs.There is no correlation between equity and the place in the league table in Allsvenska football clubs..

In this thesis we compare how different strategies in choosing attribute values affects junk mail filtering. We used two different variants of a naïve Bayesian junk mail filter. The first variant classified an e-mail by comparing it to a feature vector containing all attribute values that were found in junk mails in the part of the e-mail collection we used for training the filter. The second variant compared an e-mail to a feature vector that consisted of the attributes that was found in ten or more junk mails in the part of the e-mail collection we used for training the filter. We used an e-mail collection that consisted of 300 e-mails, 210 of these were junk mails and 90 were legitimate e-mails.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate which the main determinants of capital structure in Swedish listed firms are and to identify which incentives lies behind managers choice of capital structure determinants. Further, the study investigates whether the Post Keynesian theory and theories which incorporate behavioral aspects can be used to explain the capital structure decisions or if the traditional Neoclassical theory give an better explanation. We have used a qualitative method to analyze the determinants of capital structure and the managers incentives behind capital structure decision. We conducted a survey which was sent to 83 Chief Financial Managers and financial executives in Swedish firms listed on Mid Cap or Large Cap. The questionnaire was on-line which enabled for the respondents to quickly and convenient respond.

In this Masters thesis we investigate query expansion using an electronic thesaurus. We formed 30 topics from the library and information science field. For each topic three searches were made in the bibliographic database LISA Library and Information Science Abstracts via CSA Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. LISA has an electronic thesaurus attached. We used this thesaurus to form baseline queries, baseline queries expanded with synonyms, and baseline queries expanded with both synonyms and related terms.

The purpose of my study is to find out which way the extended school staff has their knowledge about conflicts, what they think is the cause of a conflict and how they handle conflicts.To answer these questions, I have chosen to do interviews with an available group. I interviewed six persons of different gender, age, nationality and they have been working from three to twenty years at afterschool care.I have analyzed my empirical material using Szklarkis four causes of a conflict and Malténs strategies for conflict management.My conclusion is that the after-school staff's knowledge is mostly based on experience, partly through work with children group in afterschool care and as a youth leader in the voluntary sector. The strategy almost always used for the after-school staff were the collusion strategy.