Over a long period of time, there has been a rich debate in the academic and financial world if active management can generate an excess return. Many experts say that the current active management strategies is nothing more than a money grab that produces large gains, for banks and investment firms, through high management fees while producing no excess value for the individuals buying their service. In short, an effective market makes it almost impossible for fund managers to produce value for their clients in the long run.No argument has only one side though, other experts say that active management has a role to play because not all investors are rational. This irrationality can lead to mispricing on financial assets in the marketplace and in turn lead to an ineffective market where active management can fill a much needed role. The purpose of this study is therefore to see if active management strategies can create a higher risk adjusted return, taking management fees into consideration, during times of high volatility when the uncertainty is at its peak.

Background: Investors have several options to choose from when the goal is to achieve the highest yield at the lowest cost and risk. Stocks are a common investment options, but is also associated with risks. Portfolios are usually constructed with several different assets to reduce the unsystematic risk of investment. Funds are similar to composite stock portfolios, the big difference is that they dealt with in their entirety and investors may not affect the fund's content. The problem remains that whether you choose stocks or mutual funds there is still uncertainty as to how the future will unfold.

This is a thesis about design of young stands of trees. A big source of inspiration has been Västerskog and Tor Nitzelius Park in Alnarp which both consists of a structure of squares. I wanted to examine if this type of planting could be valuable from an aesthetic and recreational point of view. One problem today is that many people believe that we have to wait for decades for a planting to grow up so that we can enjoy the ?ready result?.

New family stuctures are constantly emerging in society. Are these changes mirrored in foster care practice? The aim of this study was to explore to what extent homosexual families are represented when a child is given a foster home. The nuclear family has throughout history been assured a stable position both in society as well as in the foster care practice. During the last ten years a homosexual relationship has been legaly accepted through different amendents and it has also been more integrated and accepted in society.

As a result of my fascination for nature I have chosen to study the possibilities to introduce natural environments on schoolyards. Too many schoolyards are lacking vegetation and many of them look like sterile asphalt deserts. The master thesis consists of two parts. The first part is based on literature studies and the second part in which findings from part one are put into practice. Five examples are presented; four schoolyards in Malmö; Kryddgårdsskolan, Kirsebergsskolan, Rörsjöskolan and Lindängeskolan and one in Kalmar; Åbyskolan. Malmö Naturskola has been working with the chosen areas on the schoolyards in Malmö.

Many companies have historically forced their interests through without any thoughts about the future needs of the humans and the society. In the last few years voices have been raised for a change, companies need to take their responsibility regarding sustainable development.The purpose of the report is to describe and explain possible relations between sustainabil-ity performance of companies and profitability, valuation, industry and size respectively.To be able to judge the sustainability performance of the companies Folksam (2006a) have been used. This is a solid investigation of the companies listed on the A- and O-lists of the Stockholm Stock Exchange by the end of 2005. The sustainability marks have been com-pared with the chosen key values for each hypothesis respectively. With this quantitative data as foundation, a quantitative approach and a deductive method have been used.In the first area of the investigation, profitability, the authors found correlation for the main hypothesis between sustainability performance and ?Return on Total Assets? through a statistical test.

The intrest and development of bioenergy and energy from renewable sources in Sweden has increased rapidly over the last few years. There are a whole lot of alternatives for those who would like to venture and invest in renewable energy production. Production of renewable energy opens up many opportunities for forestry and farming to venture a new branch of production, on basis of the primary production. Several of the new energy sources grows on farmland or in the forest. The opportunities exist in the primary products, as well as in refining and reselling, in the value chain of energy. The starting-point is the Farmer as an energyproducer. This master thesis studies the nature of farmer-own firms, who has invested in production of renewable energy.

Jag har tagit del av ett projekt som heter ?Platsinnovation i Swedish Lapland ?. Platsinnovation beskrivs som en principiell ny form av innovation som ska bidra till ett attraktivt och hållbart samhälle både socialt, ekonomiskt och miljömässigt. I begreppet ingår tre delar: fysisk gestaltning, innehåll och platsmarknadsföring (Karlberg, 2015 & LTU, 2015). Projektet bedrivs av Luleå tekniska universitet (LTU) med syfte att utforska hur vi kan ta tillvara på en plats identitet och förstärka upplevelsen av platsen.

In the recent years auditing scandals all around the world, deficient internal control has attracted a lot of attention. This has contributed to further requirements on insight and internal control. Those scandals have seriously damaged the auditor?s profession and contributed to a reduced trust among the public. Therefore an extensive work to recover and stringed the trust was started all around the world.

Within the next five years about 15 % of the Swedish forest owners that will undergo a succession of ownership. Presently the most common way to acquire a forest estate in Sweden is to acquire it within the family. To decide to let go after a whole life as a forest owner and manager of your own land is for many people a hard decision to make and often requires a long process. The complex process that a succession of ownership often is includes both questions about economy, legal aspects and regulations, taxes and questions of more personal nature, often called soft issues. These personal aspects or soft issues are important and can if handled poorly or not at all negatively affect relationships in the family for a very long time.

Background: Enterprises often refer to their employees as ?Our most valuable assets? in annual reports and other written statements. In reality, employees are seen as an expense rather than an asset in annual reports and the voluntary disclosure is often insufficient. Human capital disclosure has been discussed through decades and the latest topic in voluntary disclosure is called integrated reporting. Knowledge firms should disclose more about their employees than industrial companies due to the fact that the employees are a considerably more important asset to these types of enterprises.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the disclosure of human capital, compare the disclosures between knowledge firms and industrial companies, and study the development of the human capital disclosures between the years 2003-2013.

Competition is keen in the fashion industry of today. Homogenous products and prices aredriving competition and most firms are struggling hard to attract customers. Brands havebecome one of the most important assets for success and are often critical for the choices of theconsumers. A strong brand is often considered as a substantial value in the eyes of the consumerand gives the individual firm a competitive advantage in the marketplace. To build a strongbrand it takes that the brand identity not is in conflict with the brand image of a firm or a product.Sometimes one of these conflicts exit and sometimes the firms are not even aware of it.In this thesis we study how two firms, Lindex and Prada, perceive their own image and then wecompare how the images of the firms are perceived by the customers.

Institutional repositories are now being created to manage, preserve, and maintain the digital assets and intellectual output of a university. The incentives to change the process of scholarly communication have also begun serving as a strong motivator. There are problems to consider and questions to be solved when dealing with electronic publishing and the implementation of institutional repositories. At present time no summary exists regarding the activities of scholarly electronic publishing at Swedish universities and university colleges.This Master's thesis aims to describe the current situation regarding electronic publishing and the development of institutional repositories at Swedish universities and university colleges. To investigate the situation, a questionnaire was sent out to 38 academic libraries since they are normally responsible for the electronic publishing within institutions of higher education.

AbstractAuthors:Stefan Harrå and Magnus BjörkAdvisor: Markku PenttinenTitle: Accounting Consequences of the change in pension accounting Background to problem: When the revised IAS 19 comes into force January 1, 2013, it means that two of the three accounting principles for defined benefit pension plans are disappearing, including the corridor method. The corridor method has made it possible for companies to defer its actuarial gains and losses. Now that the corridor approach abolished then the unrecognized actuarial gains and losses immediately be covered by equity, which involves very large amounts of some companies. Why the amounts have grown so big is much because of the discount rate. The discount rate is a controversial parameter, and there is disagreement on how it should be fixed.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the accounting implications this will have for the company applied the corridor method, and if there is some parameters in the actuarial assumption that is more important than others.Methodology: The thesis has mainly been based on a qualitative research through qualitative interviews with a small sample that is affected by this change.

Background: Enterprises often refer to their employees as ?Our most valuable assets? in annual reports and other written statements. In reality, employees are seen as an expense rather than an asset in annual reports and the voluntary disclosure is often insufficient. Human capital disclosure has been discussed through decades and the latest topic in voluntary disclosure is called integrated reporting. Knowledge firms should disclose more about their employees than industrial companies due to the fact that the employees are a considerably more important asset to these types of enterprises.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the disclosure of human capital, compare the disclosures between knowledge firms and industrial companies, and study the development of the human capital disclosures between the years 2003-2013.