The question of whether financial analysts can forecast stock movements or not has been widely debated for many years. This study examines if an investor has been able to receive an excess return by following financial analysts? recommendations. We continue by studying if an investor has been able to earn a different excess return by following different types of recommendations. The study includes more than 15,000 recommendations made by 10 first tier banks and brokerages on the Swedish market during the years 2003-2007.

Variations in fertility have caused a problematic situation in Sweden among other European countries. According to the Council of Europe we are facing an economic and demographic challenge, when the baby boomers of the 1940?s are retiring. Economists have for a long time studied the connection between economic factors and fertility, and several studies have found a correlation between business cycles and birth rates. This connection is again of current interest 2008, when a financial bubble bursts at the same time as a baby boom occurs.

It is important for every store to have a good financial performance which can be affected by the average purchase and the number of customers in the store. Customers shopping experience can affect both of these factors and therefore it is important for retailers to know about how an in-store environment can affect this experience. The purpose of this study is to give retailers an indication of the importance of consumers' shopping experience and how this may affect the store's financial performance. To study this subject an in-store survey was conducted in four grocery stores in Stockholm where a total of 320 consumers answered a total of 41 questions about their shopping experience. By sales data it was possible to conduct a statistical analysis to see which variables regarding consumers shopping experience influenced the average purchase.

In this essay, we examine the new form of loan which is called ?SMS-loans? which is in understanding terms ? ?text message loans?. This was established in Sweden in 2006. Income-loans are fast loans taken during a short period, usually up to 30 days. Costs which are additional to the loan are interest and fees.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att studera hur socialsekreterare arbetar med aktivering av försörjningsstödstagare och vilka faktorer som påverkar arbetet med aktiveringen. Materialet för studien består av fyra intervjuer med socialsekreterare som arbetar med ekonomiskt bistånd i en kommun i Sverige. Resultaten visar att aktivering av arbetslösa försörjningsstödstagare utförs i form av jobbaktivering eller resursaktivering. Alla intervjuade socialsekreterare ser på aktivering som en bra och nödvändig åtgärd, som både har en stöttande och kontrollerande funktion med tyngdpunkt på stöd. Vidare visar resultaten att det finns faktorer på tre nivåer som påverkar arbete med aktivering:Samhällsnivå: Socialtjänstlagen, arbetsmarknaden, politiska beslut, skärpta regelverk, information och samverkan;Organisationsnivå: otydligt uppdrag, riktlinjer och kriterier; resursbrist, tidsbrist, arbetsbelastning, bristande samverkan, bristande information;Individnivå: socialsekreterarens erfarenhet och utbildning, syn på aktivering; klienteras utbildning, arbetslivserfarenheter, motivation, socialkompetens och eventuella individuell problematik, önskningar, mål och syn på framtid, tidigare erfarenheter av kontakt med socialtjänsten..

This thesis studies the relationship between risk and the first day returns of Initial Public Offerings (IPO) by assessing the risk of each issuing company with a risk model that combine financial key ratios of importance. The study is based on 92 IPO?s that were made on the Stockholm OMX stock exchange during the period of 1997-2009. The point of departure was to investigate if the uncertainty created by the asymmetric information between investors and the issuing firm could be captured by predicting the possibility of failure in the future. This has been studied by applying Skogsvik?s probability of failure model on the 92 issuing firms.

The paper is a discourse analysis of the liberal environmental discourse in Sweden today. It is based on articles in two of the main liberal Swedish newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Sydsvenska Dagbladet, and a liberal periodical, Neo.The purpose of this study is to analyze how the environmental problems that have been produced by the industrialised society, especially global warming, are seen upon in the liberal discourse in Sweden today. The theoretical point of departure is a discourse analysis that as a method seeks to analyze the material to reveal what assumptions the discussion departs from, and what assumptions the discussions reject.The thesis concludes that the main trends in the discussions are to position the environment against the financial system and state that the capitalist system is the only system that can solve the environmental issues. The existing environmental problems are not denied, but constantly belittled and only considered to be a problem if it poses a direct threat to humans. The solution for these environmental problems is believed to be the strengthening of the financial system and the development of new technologies..

Financial exploitation of children worldwide is a global problem, causing consequences for both the national economy and labor market, as well as the working child who is deprived of its rights of education and normal development. Pakistan has several national laws in order to work against and to regulate the existence of child labour. Another important mechanism to fight the financial exploitation of the children is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This Convention was ratified by Pakistan in 1990. As a result, new national laws have been admitted, already existing laws have been amended, educational projects have been established and the common knowledge on the problems regarding the subject have attracted a lot of attention.

Problem. Sponsorship has increased continuously during the 21st century, however, at the same time the public interest of traditional promotion has been diminishing. The meaning of sponsorship is a very diffuse and therefore the concept needs to be investigated. Due to the multitude of sponsorship and its impreciseness about its financial value, it is difficult to evaluate sponsorship for companies, especially when there is a difficulty in choosing a decent method for evaluation.Purpose. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the concept of sponsorship, motives for sponsorship and evaluation of sponsorship according to the theory and give empirical examples of how these areas are being managed by companies.Method.

The purpose of this study is to ? through a discourse analysis ? examine how the parliamentary committee ? Ansvarskommittén ? legitimizes the need for merging administrative regions. The committee?s investigation is what underlies the present debate on regionalisation and the merging of regions in Sweden. To carry out this discourse analysis, I have used ?What?s the problem represented to be??, by Carol Lee Bacchi as an analytical framework.

This study highlights the structures and networks thatexist among financial analysts on the Swedish financial market. The study isbased on nine semi-structured interviews with buy- and sell-side analysts, anindependent analyst and an Investor Relations Manager.The theoretical framework of the study is based on acombination of the research fields Behavioral Finance and Social Studies ofFinance. These two research fields have proven to be a good basis for thequalitative approach used in the analysis. The study is divided into four thematic areas: Fundamentals / Psychology, Independence and consensus, Ranking and Social network.The results show that there are a large number offactors, structures and interpersonal relationships that affect how analystsmake their decisions and conduct their analysis. Among other things, theinterdependence between analysts and their counterparts prohibits the movetowards a more clear system for compensation.

Laws, regulations and generally accepted accounting principles hold options on how companies should recognize revenue. Generally accepted accounting principles are determined by standard-setting bodies as the Accounting Standards Board and the Financial Supervisory Authority, which is influenced by international standard-setting bodies as the IASB. Service revenue is generally recognized when performance is completed, but there are variations in when a performance is considered complete. The different accounting options available create difficulties in comparing companies over time and between companies, which in turn creates difficulties to achieve a true and fair view. By clarifying what methods and principles in accounting for service income the unlisted companies in Sweden are using and why these differences exist, we have been able to study how the comparability and the true and fair view is affected by these differences.

This qualitative study examines the participation that older people have in their own home care by exploring experiences of care workers. We will investigate to see if there are limitations due to financial implications in the sector. Modern day care of the elderly in Sweden is facing increasing pressures to both show cost savings whilst maintaining the same levels of service within the community. It is becoming more essential for older people to participate in their own care for the sake of their health and well-being. The method that we used for data collection was qualitative interviews.

This study is about conception in the evaluation of financial assistance within the social services. The aim of this study is to describe and understand how social workers reason about variation, conception and local norms and its significance in the evaluation process. To reach this purpose we have conducted semi-structured interviews with eight social workers in which different themes were discussed and reasoned about. In order to understand and analyze our results we have studied/used the knowledge about tacit knowledge and street-level bureaucracy. Our results showed, as previous research states, that social workers do have conceptions about clients.

The association between disclosure level and asymmetric information is a matter of importance andconsiderable interest to the financial reporting community. The theory in this area suggests that acommitment by a firm to increased levels of disclosure should lower the information asymmetry thuslowering the cost of equity. This theory may be compelling, but so far the empirical results have beenambiguous. Due to increased globalization the demand for high quality accounting standards has risen. In2005 The International Accounting Standard Board launched the standard named IFRS 3.