A reforming trend is captured showing that countries are shifting from defined benefit pension systems towards defined contribution systems. The reforms have been justified through predictions that the defined benefit systems will not manage to provide good enough pensions to members in the future. The newer defined contribution pension plans often include individual financial accounts where individuals have the possibility to choose how a part of their pension savings should be invested. Sweden was early to introduce such a system, which at the moment provides more than 800 funds to choose from. The aim of this thesis is to capture the market risk associated with these individual investments and does so by using Monte Carlo simulations for six selected pension funds.

Örebro UniversityDepartment of Social SciencesSociology and social psychology, Continuation course, 61-90 p.Essay 15 p, Spring -08.Title: ?Youth (work)seekers?Author: Karolina LindellAbstractThis essay focuses on young people?s social background when they apply for their first job. I have interviewed four young people from a small town in Sweden, to see how social background and identity affects their vital conditions in general. I?m interested understanding the relationship between structure and agency.

Can landscape architecture be seen as an economical asset rather than as a cost? Can well designed outdoor environments affect real estate values? This study investigates the economical value of landscape architecture and its influence on real estate prices. Research results on the relation between landscape architecture and real estate values are here compiled together with a survey made among players on the Swedish real estate market of their attitudes towards the problem. This study shows that the players on the Swedish real estate market often are unaware of the economical effects of landscape architecture pointed out in the compiled research. The study also shows that to use this information in actual projects several steps need to be taken: better knowledge of the problem, more and better compilations of research results, effective channels to spread the compiled information, proper employment and implementation of the knowledge. Extended knowledge of the relation between landscape architecture and real estate values will result in new ways of making money on outdoor environments. This would in turn have consequences for how the real estate business treat outdoor environments and how landscape architects work. The study is divided into four main questions: 1: Is there a relation between good landscape architecture and real estate prices? 2: What is the view of the players on the real estate market in this matter? 3: Is there more knowledge, research and practical models at hand? 4: What future steps can be taken to broaden the knowledge and apply it to real situations?.

Foreign invested SMEs have recently become increasingly interested in China. The enterprises are in this report categorized as second wave companies since they follow the footsteps of previous pioneers, of which mostly were larger companies. The ambitions of the SMEs are either to sell products on the ever expanding Chinese market or to utilize the potential of low cost production for global markets. The existing literature is fragmented and solely based on the experience of larger companies. We believe that SMEs are facing new and different challenges, and thus a new generic theoretical frame work is desirable.

Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this essay is to analyze and discuss how MTV is affected by the development that takes place on the world?s media market. The aim is also to see how MTV?s target group?s image of the channel can give guidelines in how MTV should act in this new media era.Material/method: I have examined the development on the media market and then created a model consisting of relevant factors that could affect a TV-channel today. Those factors and the two factors image and profile are then applied on MTV.

During a fire large amounts of particles and unhealthy agents occur.  Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and toxic metals are examples among many others. These agents have a capacity to bond to particles and when the fire is extinguished, the particles can be transferred with the extinguish water into the soil and to the groundwater.Recent studies in particles have been conducted. A study by Ulrika Iverfelt (2014) reviled that the particles from a fire contained large amounts of both PAH and metals, which is consistent with earlier analyses. Her column experiments with particles in the size ? 11 microns and ?100 microns in silica sand, reviled that the larger particles was immobilized because the transportation was influenced by sieving or physiochemical particle and surface interactions.The transport of the particles in soil and groundwater is regulated by two main mechanisms: physiochemical surface interactions and straining.

In our globalized society massconsumption is widespread. However there is a trend showingthat people are starting to re-use clothes instead of buying newly produced garments. Reasonsfor buying secondhand clothing are many. During the 1950s people strived to look likeeveryone else but in the 1960s this changed. Subcultures grew stronger.

The purpose of this study was to increase knowledge about what the lives of the unemployed youth of immigrant background looks like, and what the views of the unemployed young people are about work and employment. The study is a qualitative study where the empirical material is based on interviews with seven unemployed immigrant youth between the ages of 19 and 25 years. A study where the central questions was to explore how the informants' living conditions and identity are affected by being unemployed. The other issues aimed at how informants background affected their ability to enter the labour market, and the job expectations the informants had about the future and the Swedish labour market. Empirin have been analyzed with regard to methodology tool based theory, as well as theoretical starting points, such as social capital, formal and informal channels, ethnicity and stigma theory.

Runt om i världen ökar produktionen av elektricitet från solenergi och Sverige är inget undantag. Här uppnår däremot solelens andel av totala elproduktionen mindre änen promille. I denna rapport har vi därför utvärderathur mycket potentiell takyta som finns att tillgå i Tranemo kommun. För att evaluera detta har det gjorts en fältstudie tillsammans med samarbetspartnern Tranemo kommun där företag och kommunala byggnader undersökts. Därifrån har takytors area, lutning och väderstreckdokumenterats för att med vår egenkonstruerade beräkningsmodell uträknalämpligheten för platsen.

Abstract The 1st of January 2009 there will be a new discrimination law in Sweden. That means that the Parliament finally will interpret three EC-directives in there entirety. The new law means that the present discrimination laws will be merged to one law. The situation for disabled persons on the labour market has improved, since the discrimination law was founded in 1999. The Labour Court got some cases to judge and media has attracted attention to disabled persons rights.

The aim of this comparative study is to analyse the French and the Polish regional governance in order to see if there are any differences in their regional ruling systems. Further more I will study their different possibilities in taking part in the European Union regional political market. The shape of the regional systems will be explored both organisationally (study of the institutional entities of the regional construction) and functionally (study of the competencies of the regional body etcetera) to focus on its cause on the regional development. My over all focus will be to find out whether regional rule means differently in the countries France and Poland.Several questions are dealt with and the two main ones are as follows; How do the different structures of the form of government in France and Poland influence the governance on the regional level? Do Poland, as a new member state of the European Union, have what it takes to face the challenges of the new membership; or are there a complex of problems arising from the admittance that prevent its regions from fully taking part in the European regional political market?Some of my conclusions are as follows;There are major differences between the two countries when it comes to their regional ruling systems leading to different abilities in taking part in the European regional political market.

The purpose of this study is to look at the line extensions of the Swedish dairy company Skånemejerier. We have chosen to focus on how trends in ecological products and Functional Food influence the line extensions. The competition in the food sector have made it harder for companies to be seen in the market area and the companies have to make their brands more visible. That is one of the reasons why companies work with line extensions. The study is based on a qualitative approach because we wanted to come closer to our subject in order to establish a greater understanding for the case itself.

The purpose with this essay is to study how a micro enterprise builds a brand. This because the current situation makes it difficult to stand out from the vast amount of marketing messages available in the market without having an extensive marketing campaign. Small companies do not have the opportunity to put a lot of recourses as money into marketing as the large companies do. Neither do they afford to repair a brand failure.Brand building is a process that constantly is in progress in a company, large or small. To make this process concrete we have chosen to study the four factors; brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations and brand loyalty.

This thesis is about university spin-offs and the competition in high technology industries. In the light of efforts to increase the competitiveness of the European Union, an effective transfer of cutting edge technology from universities to the industry plays an important role. University spin-offs, start-ups founded to exploit academic inventions, are likely to face considerable market entry barriers. This is among other reasons due to high capital requirements for further technology development and lack of complementary resources. With a combination of relevant literature and empirical investigation, commercialisation of technologies within spin-offs is investigated and analysed.

Thesis purposeThe study aims to examine the effects vertical and horizontal line extensions might have on the total parent brand equity in terms of strength and its baseline product regarding of market share, loyalty and penetration under an elapsed period of time. The study aims to investigate a number of actual conducted line extensions effect on the above mentioned aspects of Kellers (1993) definition of brand strength as a part of the total brand equity. MethodologyThe effect of a number of line extensions of the parent brands and the baseline products is being examined in terms of market share, loyalty rate, cannibalization and market penetration. The thesis is focused on the correlations between these different parameters during a certain elapsed time ratio in order to test our theoretically routed hypothesizes in a deductive manner. Occasional correlations are derived from an indexation of data collected from the Gfk database.