Due to globalization, decentralization and the capitalist system's need to physical location cities have become increasingly important economic spheres during thee last decades. City mayors are seen as increasingly important actors, who can shape the future economic development of their cities through networking with businesses and strategic policy development. Therefore several European countries have introduced mayor reforms to enable mayors to take a bigger responsibility for the local development. These reforms raise interesting questions concerning what leadership changes they produce at the local level and if there is a difference between local leaders and leadership in different countries. This paper further explores the connection between the local leader and the locality since this relationship often has been neglect in studies concerning mayor reforms.

The French historian Marc Bloch is considered to be one of the masters of medieval history, particularly his creation Feudal Society has been an essential piece of work for everyone who desires a deeper understanding of the general feudal society. Bloch gives his readers a vivid and living picture of a society so far beyond our present that it is sometimes hard to keep in mind that this society is part of our legacy. At the same time Bloch endows his readers with the special historical outlook he and his successors has developed, the history of the mentalities. By reaching further back in time, to the Roman and Germanic cultures and the manorial system, he proves his point that the feudal society was build on the legacy of older structures and institutions.In the coming study I will disentangle the early feudal structure of power as Bloch has described it in his Feudal Society. The essence of this power structure is to find in the very characteristic tie between two men, the vassalage.

The free movement of the Roma minority has become questioned within the European Union. This study seeks to understand why this question has reached disproportionally importance in comparison to the number of Roma migrants within the union, and to understand the great attention given to the question. Based on the Copenhagen?s school of securitization, the purpose of this study is to show how this magnification of the question occurs due to the framing of the Roma migrants as a security problem. Focusing on the speech act of the securitization theory, this paper contains a study of political actor?s statements concerning Roma migrants.

Problembakgrund: Studier för sambandet mellan volatilitet och avkastning har för det aggregerade marknadsperspektivet varit odelat enliga i att detta är negativt. Detsamma gäller inte sambandet vid studier på aktier för enskilda företag där ett antal har kunnat observera ett positivt samband. Detta skulle betyda att det är fördelaktigt när en akties volatilitet ökar, vilket går emot tidigare teorier som säger att sjunkande aktiekurser leder till en ökande volatilitet. I en teori har reala optioner presenterats som en förklaring genom dess konvexitet som leder till ett samtidigt ökande värde när volatilitet ökar.Problemformulering: Existerar ett positivt samband mellan volatilitet och avkastning för enskilda aktier noterade på den svenska aktiemarknaden?Syfte: Studiens huvudsyfte ligger i att avgöra om det går att observera ett positivt samband mellan volatilitet och avkastning på företagsnivå.

Language choice is a required course in years 6-9 of compulsory school. Those who do not wish to study a Modern language of French, Spanish or German may choose language choice English or language choice Swedish instead. These two courses are meant to provide students with additional support and advanced work in those subjects. Although grades are given in Modern Languages, language choice English and Swedish do not merit a grade. Neither language choice English nor language choice Swedish has a set curriculum or syllabus.

This study aims at examining the prospects for a policy transfer of a Swedish municipal environmental policy (that of Växjö) to the French urban commune Blois, for which an ambition of becoming a leading eco-city in France, was declared by the mayor in 2008.In the analysis, emphasis is laid on mechanisms to institutionalize the main environmental policy principles, such as political and institutional structures and processes. Other prospects for an institutionalization of a new environmental policy that are to be investigated are economic structures as well as visions of the different decision-makers concerned. Research methods used in the study are qualitative interviews, document studies and a questionnaire.The findings of the analysis show that today?s prospects for an environmental policy in Blois close to that of Växjö, are clearly limited. The limitations can partly be found in economic structures but these seem to be rather related to a lack of priority amongst actors.

Diskussioner förs ständigt om huruvida företagets redovisning ger en rättvisande bild av verkligheten. En balanspost som länge diskuterats och ifrågasatts är goodwill. Sedan 2005 ska svenska företag värdera denna tillgång till sitt såkallade verkliga värde genom att göra årliga nedskrivningsprövningar. Enligt denna nya värderingsmetod ska företagen uppskatta faktorer som framtida kassaflöden, diskonteringsränta och tillväxttakt för att göra en korrekt värdering av sin goodwill. Vissa kritiker menar att denna värderingsmetod för många företag kan bygga på subjektivitet.

We acknowledge the lack of empirical studies of the performance of analyst target prices in the Swedish stock market by examining the profitability of target prices for stocks publicly traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. We use consensus target prices issued between 2006-2010 and create two different strategies to observe the abnormal returns generated during this period. Going long in the top decile stocks with the best target prices and going short in the bottom decile stocks with the worst target prices generates a statistically significant abnormal buy-and-hold return of 8.9%. An active strategy with daily portfolio rebalancing and a timely response to target price changes generates a less significant monthly alpha of 1.4% against CAPM. The results show to be robust against the size effect discovered by Fama and French.

I följande arbete har en ekonometrisk undersökning av svensk verkstadsindustri genomförts. Åtta bolag, registrerade på Stockholmsbörsen, och tillhörande verkstadsindustrin har valts ut. Dessa är Volvo AB, Sandvik, ABB, Alfa Laval, Assa Abloy, SKF, Scania och Atlas Copco. Bolagens genomsnittliga avkastning utgör den beroende variabeln i undersökningen. De förklarande variablerna har valts med hänsyn tagen till fakta presenterad i bolagens årsrapporter samt ekonomisk relevans.

This essay investigates the pupils, in Swedish upper secondary school in the greater Stockholm area, who choose to study the Russian language as a foreign language. The essay asks; who are these students, and what is motivation behind their language choice? In order to answer these two questions the essay uses both interviews and paper survey. The theoretical background ofth is essay is based on the works and theories of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and thus the question; who are these students is aimed at the students' social and economical background in lines with Bourdieu's theories. The essay also uses the earlier study of Swedish sociologist Mikael Palme, in which he maps the different schools and programs in the greater Stockholm area, in a socio-economical context based on habitus.

The aim of this essay is to get deeper into the mysteries of love as they manifest themselves as most open: in literature. I have studied the two French writers Claire Etcherelli and Françoise Sagan, both writing about love in the 50?s Paris. While Etcherelli?s love takes place between factory workers, Sagan?s scene is the upper middle class.

AbstractBackground: Countries can be seen as brands (nation brands) with brand values that transmitto the country?s products. Country-of-origin (COO), the brands nationality, links the productto an associative network of cultural shared national stereotypes. Through associating thebrand with a country or a region, the credibility of the brand can increase and strengthen thebrand. Therefore COO is used in marketing to position a brand.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how luxury fashion brands communicatetheir national identity through analyzing their advertising.

This paper?s purpose is to examine a Swedish missionary activity from a human rights perspective. As a scope I have chosen the Swedish evangelical mission to Congo-Brazzaville, from its establishment in 1909 to the congolese church's self-determination in 1961. I consider certain elements of the missionary activity that affect human rights, to discover wether the activity was in order with modern day human rights standards or not. During these years, Congo was part of the French colony Equatorial Africa, so the missionaries? part in the colonial discourse is taken into consideration.

In this thesis I discuss and analyse the use of violence of Basque radical nationalists after the 11th of September 2001 and the bombing of Madrid the 11th of March 2004. The field study is performed in the Basque country with interviews both on the French and Spanish side of the border with representatives from the Basque Nationalist Liberation Movement (BNLM).After the 11th of September the Spanish government continued its struggle against the countries own terror - ETA. But as the research will show the new political context after the 11/9 made it possible for the state to intensify the labelling of groups from the BNLM as terrorist organisations and thereby putting its members and leaders in prison for terrorism. My research shows that this social change may lead to a mobilisation of activists inside ETA, which in turn might create a continuity of the group's use of violence. The scenario is though challenged by an other setting in which the political situation after the 11/9 have made use of violence by militant groups like ETA illegitimate and irrational as a consequence of the mental trauma among the people of the western world.

ABSTRACT The purpose of this essay has been to analyse an incident that received huge attention in the media that took place on February 24 2011 involving the famous fashion designer John Galliano. Galliano who at the time served as a creative director at French luxury fashion house Dior hurled anti-Semitic remarks during an altercation to a couple at Paris café La Perle. We intended to do a study of the material in two parts. The primary focus of our thesis was to analyse six different newspaper articles that involved the incident. We chose to analyse three articles from Great Britain and three from the United States to get a versatile image of the incident.