The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between Earnings Management (EM) and certain characteristics of management forecasts, among a sample of Swedish listed companies. The forecast characteristics studied are: 1) Forecast venue: How explicitly is the forecast presented? 2) Forecast precision: How detailed is the estimated number? 3) Forecast measure: Which measure(s) are forecasted? We use a sample of 68 annual management forecasts, obtained from year-end reports between the years 2007-2011. EM during the forecasted year (2008-2012) is estimated using the cross-sectional modified-Jones model. The forecast characteristics are then related to the degree of EM during the forecasted period.

There will be changes in the accounting regulations in Sweden. Firms will be categorised as K1-K4 firms depending on the size of the company. There will be different levels of accounting in the four categories. Firms will always have the possibility to choose a more advanced accounting regulation than the one they are obligated to due to their size. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate which factors that influence the management in K3 firms in the choice between the K3 and K4 regulation.

An increased number of participants in the construction industry is asking for accompanying terrain models to the project in order to get a better understanding of the field. When the desire to create buildings that fit together nicely with the surrounding area is increasing, it becomes more and more important to have a broad base of knowledge about the ground on which the building is to be erected. Terrain models are also very useful in the planning of logistics, documentation for landscape architecture projects, and billings for mass calculations.Surveys for creating terrain models can be performed with laser scanning. The advantage of laser scanning is the time-effective surveying, the detailed information as well as the ability of application in complex environments resulting in a cost-efficient project. With this in mind our thesis was defined in collaboration with the company Bjerking AB in Uppsala in order to investigate if there were any softwares suitable for terrain modeling.

Storm water is rain and melted snow that runs off, primarily from impervious surfaces.Future storm water management is facing the challenges of increased precipitation, asclimate changes, and increased areas of impervious surfaces due to the expansion anddensification of the cities. Impervious surfaces reduce the potential for water to infiltratein the ground leading to increased surface runoff and higher peak discharge.The runoff coefficient is closely related to the percentage of impervious surfaces andrepresents the maximum percentage of a catchment that can contribute to runoff. In thisstudy, the objective was to evaluate the weighted runoff coefficient for three differenturban types; apartment buildings, townhouses and residential areas and a comparisonbetween today and the 1970`s was made.The runoff coefficient was determined by manual mapping of the different surface typesin each area based on data in the form of orthophotos and aerial photographs. The surfacetypes that were mapped were asphalt, permeable areas, tiles, sand/gravel and roof.Tiles and sand/gravel were the most difficult surface types to map. In order to see towhat extent these categories influenced the weighted runoff coefficient a sensitivityanalysis was carried out and the runoff coefficient based on surface type was changed indifferent scenarios.The results of the sensitivity analysis showed that the surface types tiles and sand/gravelhad little impact on the weighted runoff coefficient which in mainly due to the fact thatthe percentage of these surfaces types of the total area is small.The result of the study showed that the largest change in the runoff coefficient occurredin residential areas where the increase in the percentage of impervious surfaces causedby new roofs in the form of porches and garages and from paved or tiled driveways.

This master thesis concerns whether Swedish non-financial listed firms act in accordance with the optimal capital structure theory and/or pecking order theory. The examined period is 1998-2004 and we discover that Swedish companies neither follow optimal capital structure theory nor pecking order theory. From our results we conclude that there exists no single point of the capital structure which is optimal. Rather it seems as if the optimal point lies in-between an interval from 0 to the industry average, where firms tend to be indifferent to their debt-ratios. Our results show that Swedish companies prefer internal financing followed by equity and as last choice debt issuance..

Prior studies have shown that earnings management can be used either to inform or to mislead investors about the future performance of a company. However, few studies have examined the impact of earnings management on forecasting return on equity (ROE). The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the ability to forecast next year's ROE is improved when taking earnings management, measured as discretionary accruals, into account. This is examined by comparing a forecast model that takes the magnitude of discretionary accruals into consideration with a model that does not. The study is based on companies that were listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during 2002-2012.

Previous work by researchers as Eugene F. Fama and Kenneth R. French, show that average return on stocks are related to a firms characteristics like size and book-to-market ratio. These kinds of patterns in average return is not explained by The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), and are therefore seen as anomalies. Fama and French have proposed a three-factor model, which captures patterns observed in U.S average returns associated with size and value.

Previous studies have shown that there is a relationship between voluntary disclosure and analysts' forecast accuracy. However, there has been no research conducted specifically on bridges. Bridges contain information on how components such as price, volume, foreign exchange rates and acquisitions have impacted the financial performance between two periods. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the usage of bridges in quarterly financial information of companies listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. We provide a descriptive mapping of bridges and find that 30 out of 268 companies are presenting bridges as a part of their voluntary disclosures, with large firms being the most frequent users.

The purpose with this work is to investigate the cost to produce piglet in a case study company. The starting point is going to be the agriwise (www.agriwise.org) calculation which I am going to change and adapt to the case study company. To day the pig market is bad but we have probably reached the bottom. The market has started to rise. It is no business to produce piglets today.

This thesis aims to investigate if there are any differences in the value relevance of yearly earnings announcements before (2000-2004) and after (2005-2009) IFRS were implemented for listed companies in the European Union. To assess the value relevance of earnings, an earnings response coefficient (ERC) is estimated using a linear OLS-regression model. The regression model uses accounting earnings per share as the explaining variable, with the corresponding return starting from (but not including) the previous year's earnings announcement date, ending at (and including) the current earnings announcement date, as the dependent variable. This study finds that there is no statistically significant difference between the estimated ERCs for the two periods. Although no statistically significant difference is found, data shows that the R2-values, which measure the explanatory power of the regressions, are higher for the period before IFRS.

This study is an examination of the stadium fever prevailing in Sweden. It is built stadiums in Sweden as never before. The high cost of these constructions end up in the end at the Swedish taxpayers. The study examines through the hedonic pricing of real estate how local residents value the new stadiums. The result indicates that local residents put a positive value in the costly and sumptuous buildings.

This study investigates a method for identifying human capital and its effect on company valuation. We devise a measure for the efficiency of human capital based on the personnel cost. We include all companies listed in the financial and industry sector on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm in an attempt to examine human capital and its effect on firm valuation. Our results indicate that a higher efficiency of human capital has a positive effect on return on assets. However, we find that our measure can be interpreted in two ways; either as a firm?s level of human capital efficiency or its dependency on human capital, to achieve its net sales and revenue.

I have in my thesis, examined the possibilities in terms of energy for a condominium association.To have an effective and good energy is becoming increasingly important with today's rising electric and oil prices. In my thesis I have used the condominium association Kärralyckan, which is situated in Falkenberg. The buildings at Kärralyckan are built in the mid-1970s, and are heated by electric radiators. The tap water is heated by an electric boiler.Based on that calculation I can show the various energyststem. The different solutions have been developed by contact manufacturers and installers through phone calls and e-mail.According to the results shows that geothermal heating has been a great solution for Kärralyckan.

Increased energy consumption in the world has created an increased supply of various fuels, especially fossil fuels. The Swedish government has set up various energy targets for 2020. To reach these goals it?s important to increase the energy efficiency in local buildings such as schools. This work illustrates the breakdown between energy supply and energy losses over the school.

Efter att ha ägt fastigheterna benämnda som Polstjärnan, belägna i stadsdelen Lindholmen på Norra Älvstranden i Göteborg, under många år ställs Wallenstam nu vid ett vägskäl. Med byggnader som åldrats och ett område som utvecklas ifrån dem växte fastighetsutvecklingsprojektet Polstjärnan fram.Syftet med arbetet är således att utreda en framtida utvecklingsplan för fastigheterna som är väl förankrad i området Lindholmen och kvarteret Polstjärnegatan-Karlavagnsgatan. Till att börja med ville jag få en bild av Lindholmen ser ut och vad det finns för planer för fortsatt utveckling i området. Därför kontaktade jag Johan Altenius, planarkitekt på stadsbyggnadskontoret i Göteborg och Anna Eckerstig, byggprojekt och verksamhetsansvarig på Chalmers Fastigheter.För att sedan skapa en gällande utgångspunkt för arbetet har flera personer på Wallenstam intervjuats. I dessa intervjuer har de fått ge sin bild av fastigheterna, dess historik och tidigare tankar på vidare utveckling.