The retail banking market in Sweden is highly concentrated and oligopolistic. This has been confirmed by numerous reports from different competition authorities within the EU, for example the Swedish competition authority. A considerably high number of different sorts of competition barriers has been pointed out in these reports. The competition barriers are mainly directed to the smaller banks and the potential competition. The retail banking market in Sweden is dominated by four major banks, which together has over 80 percent of all market shares.

This thesis? objective is to evaluate the recently proposed Shy (2002) approach of estimating consumer switching costs. We apply Shy?s method for estimating switching costs on the Swedish markets for bank deposits and telecommunications. The evaluation has been achieved by comparing estimated results to economic theories, related empirical studies, and our expectations.

Students who regularly cause trouble in school, how can they learn anything? That is what we asked ourselves after having visited a special school for ?troublesome students? (in Swedish resursskola). Our main purpose has been to find out how these students have experienced the help they have been given in those schools.We have interviewed students, parents and a social worker in order to find out if the alternative pedagogical methods used by those schools give the students better opportunities to perform their schoolwork. The interviews have been made two or three years after the end of their studies in compulsory school (grade 9). We have used a qualitative method with semi structured interviews and also an evaluation model.

The main purpose of this essay is to study ideas concerning the concept of ?art? within the discourse of the exhibition space that is part of a fanart community. In order to do so I have used a hermeneutical and to some extent structuralistic, discourse analysis. I have examined structure and rhetorics in two established and popular communities, Fanart-Central and deviantART.My conclusions states that personal ideas regarding artistic value are undermined the joint policies, because of a collective rhetoric somewhat inherent in the community structure.When a lot of works are being based on internal knowledge of symbolics and historical narratives, this may to some extent have consequences where unfamiliar observers might fail to notice elements of possible significance. Moreover, certain interests in keeping a united front of ?quality art? may also affect a general idea immediate to what signifies fanart.

The aim of this essay is to examine whether democracy in St Petersburg isconsolidated or not. Since studies of democratic transition have been rarelyconducted on post-communist cities, this study seems fruitful. Using the Linz andStepan theory, where democracy is considered consolidated when it has become?the only game in town? and Orttung's three criteria legitimacy, politicalpolarisation and policy effectiveness; this essay analyzes people's attitudes,political behaviour, the rule of law and civil society in St Petersburg. Theory isused to interpret the material mainly consisting of two interviews and newspaperarticles.

Knäckfrågan som uppsatsen rör sig kring är hur dessa rättigheter skall kunna garanteras när privata globala bolag, som inte har åligganden enligt FN-konventioner, kommer in som nya aktörer inom den kommunala vattenhanteringen. Hypotesen, att privatiseringar av vattenförvaltningen kan innebära risker för medborgarens rätt till tjänligt och tillgängligt vatten till rimlig kostnad, prövas därför.Vilka aktörer har i dagsläget egentligen makten över vattnet i Sverige och över de mänskliga rättigheternas tillämpning i vattenfrågan? För att få kunskaper om detta utfördes litteraturstudier i ämnet, liksom en jämförande studie mellan Norrtälje kommuns vattenförvaltning och dess driftentreprenör, Veolia Vatten AB, ett dotterbolag till det globala multi-utilitybolaget Vivendi.Konklusionerna är flera: dels att man från kommunalt håll upplever vissa fördelar med viss privatisering; dels att svensk vattenförvaltning är införlivat i ett globalt kommersiellt nätverk av privata aktörer och därför känner sig hotad av en potentiell maktförlust, s.k. ?överlagring?; dels att även den offentliga makten värnar sin domän i och med att den stiftar nya lagar med syfte att förhindra privatiseringar och stärka den offentliga kontrollen över vattnet; dels att det finns tendenser till global samverkan kring mänskliga rättigheter mellan FN-organ, det privata näringslivet, stater och ideella organisationer..

Phytoremediation is a technique using the ability of plants to absorb pollutants in their biomass from contaminated soils and remediate it. The plants are then harvested and the soil gets purified. This method is more environmental-friendly than the normally used methods for soil remediation. Glasriket in Småland is an area with large amount of pollutants including arsenic, cadmium and lead. This area must be cleaned from these metals because of the high threat to the environment ant the health of people who live here.

The northern province of Sweden has in both literature and film been depictured as something foreign and mythical, unlike the rest of the country. It has been my purpose to show in this essay that the systematic categorization of Norrland and its literature reveals multiple criteria known to define the colonial era. By reading the novel Stallo by author Stefan Spjut with postcolonial structures in mind I aim to show how the author uses Swedish mythology and through the presence of The Other criticizes colonial structures in place to this day. By examining the gothic atmosphere I intend to indicate how the trolls in the novel figures as both a horror element as well as a representation of nature itself. It is my belief that the author by further reinforcing the mythological in relation to Norrland addresses the problem at hand.

This text answers the questions how do we define what a campus is, how the concept of the campus came to exist and how it is used today, and how the Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) campus can be designed according to site conditions and the conclusions drawn from case studies at Chalmers University of Technology and Karlstad University. The purpose of the case studies is to gain insight into their campuses advantages and disadvantages. This finally results in an interpretation of how the Blekinge Institute of Technology campus can be planned. A campus is the area of land on which a college or university and its surrounding buildings resides on. Campus as a concept meant a field at first, it later evolved at American universities due to their design of college campuses.

The discussion about gender and ideals shown in mass media is a subject of great importance for the society in general. Media is playing an essential part when it comes to establish standards and values and we are constantly exposed to all types of impressions, whether we are aware or not. It is therefore of great importance that we understand how stereotypes are built and to gain a deep knowledge that would enrich the area of Media and Communication Studies.The aim and focus of this study was to analyze how male stereotypes is communicated in print advertising and how visual means of expressions helps to construct the masculinities shown. From a semiotic analysis of seven print adverts appearing in the Swedish lifestyle Magazine Café were we able to gain a thorough understanding about how male stereotypes are communicated and built.The result showed that different kinds of stereotypes are in fact used but it is still a hegemonic masculinity that is predominating. Traditional male characteristics are still in use but we were able to see strong indications of effemination, sexualizing and objectifying.

This report evaluates whether normal approximation or resampling is to prefer for estimating the distribution of the sample mean and functions of the sample mean. The evaluation relies on simulation studies. The observations of the sample are allowed to be differently distributed. In the case of sample means they are also allowed to be dependent.For sample means the two approximations behaves very similar. The most important component whether we have a good or a bad approximation is how good the approximations catch the variance of the true distribution.

Purpose: To evaluate the management development course held at FöreningsSparbanken in Ronneby during 2000. The evaluation aims to map and describe what effects the course has had on the participants. We will assess to what degree the effects meets the objectives of the course set by the manager of the bank (future management recruitment, leadership, change catalyst, aligning the strive towards a shared organisational objective). Above mentioned also implies that the organisation should be influenced in some regards. Conclusion: Our conclusion is that all of the participants have as a result of the course increased their emotional intelligence in varying levels. We also conclude that the course participants? progress has not spread to the non-participants.

This master thesis covers the development of an automatic tuning process for the existing speed controller for drive systems. The drive systems are resonant two-mass systems where a motor is used to drive a load connected by a shaft. The developed method relies heavily on system identification and the construction of a complete mechanical model of the process. With this approach, the common problem with poor load speed control that derives from measuring only the motor speed can be addressed and solved for a majority of such processes.The automatic tuning method has along with general test functions been implemented in a complete tool for automatic tuning, testing and performance evaluation and reporting for drive systems..

This essay discusses and evaluates the international currency market in regards to efficiency. To prove the theory that, the difference between expected and actual exchange rates is explained by the difference in expected and actual interest rates and the difference in expected and actual inflation between countries, a model was developed. This model was inspired by the paper of Sebastian Edwards (1982), and is based on three theories; UIP, IS/LM and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. The model uses 16 regressions estimated from three pairs of curriencies: $/SEK, £/SEK and ?/SEK.

I got interested in this subject when I came in contact with Västtrafiks new paymentsystem myself during my visits in Gothenburg. I suspected problems with the informationmaterial regarding it and others seemed to share my opinion that the payment system wasdiffcult to understand. When I contacted Västtrafik and asked them about the paymentsystem they confirmed that some understanding diffculties had occurred. With thatconfirmation I decided to make it my project to look in to the matter.Some methods were used to identify the problems. The methods could again confirm thatthere were some problems with the payment system and that the information material wasa vital reason.