The purpose with this thesis is to investigate how a number of municipalities in Stockholm County proceed when they allocate land and establish land allocation agreements for exploitation, and to investigate how a number of municipalities define land allocations and land allocation agreements on the occasion of public land sales. The aim of this thesis is to describe the allocation methods a municipally uses when they offer land for sale and to give an insight regarding which correlation different land allocation agreements have in different municipalities.Methods used are: (1) a literature review where the underlying theory for land allocations and land allocation agreements have been studied; (2) a questionnaire have been done to complement the literature review and to provide a picture of how a number of different municipalities in Stockholm County use and apply land allocations; (3) an agreement audit have been done to see the extent to which different agreement terms exists.Responses from the questionnaire, together with the definitions form different municipality?s land allocation policies and the literature review, resulted in a definition of a land allocation and a land allocation agreement. The agreement audit shows that agreement terms regarding: price or price indication, location, cost-sharing and planning costs are the most common agreement terms within the municipalities we have investigated.The study suggests that there is some confusion regarding land allocation agreements and the meaning of these, that became apparent when agreements where gathered, despite a careful explanation that it was land allocation agreements we requested, we still got exploitation agreements and purchase agreements. Therefore, we consider it necessary with an official definition of a land allocation agreement well anchored in the Planning and Building Act together with the rules of development agreements or other legislation.That there is a lack of research within the subject becomes evident when reports, essays, and other literature generally refers so the same sources.Keywords: land allocation, land allocation agreement and public land sales.

In modern society globalisation is a fact within all industries, the textile industry included. Due to improvement in areas such as logistics and communication international trade have developed fast. As changes occur rapidly on the global market and companies must adjust and revise their processes in order to stay competitive.Because of the global price reduction consumers around the world expect low-price products, which mean that the companies have to find new ways to produce in a cost-efficient way. To maximize profit most of the textile production is situated in low-cost countries due to its labour-intensive character. It is crucial for fashion companies to allocate their activities in their value-chain effectively in order to reduce lead-times.

The actual project presents the development of a testing rig for a steam engine. A short overviewabout the development of steam engines is presented, until arriving to the development of thepresent engine, which will require to be tested in different ways.The testing rig studied on this project (based on a Lanchester engine) will be used to testdifferent materials and layouts for the group Piston-Cylinder.The engine is a high performance steam power engine, which is going to have a highpower/dimensions ratio, what will lead to require high performance components and materials.An introduction to the testing rig is presented, and the entire design project is done in order toreplace the disappeared documentation of the current testing rig, built on the 1970?s. Also somemodifications done in the original testing rig are presented, as well as some detected problemsand their possible solutions..

This paper investigates the automatic stabilizer and the underlying factors behind its function. The paper includes both a literature review and an empirical analysis. The literature review discusses the IS-LM and Mundell-Fleming models and different ways to quantify the automatic stabilizer. Based on the theory, the relationship between volatility in GDP and the size of the automatic stabilizers is then analyzed with the help of regressions. Our main result shows a negative relation between these two variables.

Purpose: To examine how IR-related press releases affect share price for stock companies, and to explore how said companies practice Investor Relations.Methods: The study was conducted using an event study as well as e-interviews. The event study has a quantitative deductive research approach where the market model is used for calculating the abnormal return based on press releases. The e-interviews have a qualitative research approach and follow a semi structured interview guide. The study includes all listed stock companies within the Swedish construction industry and includes press releases from the last decade.Theory: The study is based on the efficient market hypothesis and its semi strong form, theories within Investor Relations and previous research.Results: The event study shows a significant negative abnormal return during a four day period starting the day after the press release event. The negative abnormal return could derive from investor relations being used by companies as damage control, or that the investors? expectations are too high as a result of IR.

Since the spring 2003 the tenant-owner home association the Terrace in Upplands Väsby municipality lies straight under the approach route to Arlanda Airport?s new third landing chute. Noise levels of over 70 dB have been measured in the area, which exceeds National Board of Housing?s, values for traffic noise at a terrace in connection to housing. By using the method of hedonisk pricing the essay tries to find out if there exists a willingness to pay to reduce the noise in the area.

How accessible is the city? Is there more factors than merely the strictly physical that affect how accessible the city is perceived? These questions are the starting point of this study. The greatest emphasis, in this study, is placed on the perceived parameters that affect us humans when we move in our cities. Experiences and internal images can change our behaviour and prevent free movement in the city. The result from this study shows that a city can not be seen as fully accessible unless both the physical and the perceived accessibility are fulfilled.

Syftet i denna studie är att undersöka förekomsten av resultatmanipulering samt graden av dess förekomst under året för ett vd-byte och året efterföljande ett vd-byte. Tidigare forskning har visat att resultatmanipulering förekommer och att fenomenet i amerikanska och australiensiska företag är kopplat till vd-byten där resultatmanipulering har använts för att sänka resultatet under året för vd-bytet och sedan i syfte att höja resultatet under åren efter ett vd-byte. Urvalet utgörs av företag ur Stockholmsbörsens Large Cap-lista registrerade under perioden 2006 till 2009. Efter bortfall är antalet företag i urvalet 48. Metoden är kvantitativ och består av insamling av sekundärdata.

The relatively new phenomenon of daily deals has had an amazing explosion of growth during recent years. The concept relies on offering deeply discounted products and services that a number of customers must buy in order to acquire this discounted service. Companies spend valuable resources on marketing to get customers but the effects of daily deals on the brand do not have empirical evidence. What is the customers' attitude towards companies that communicate through daily deals How is their intention to buy from that company affected This is what is the main purpose of this study. To examine how customers perceive a company, in terms of attitude toward the brand and buying intentions, when the company markets through daily deals compared to more traditional promotion.

The driving forces from the forest owners point-of-view was studied on a market where several buyers attend to procure round-wood. It was concluded that forest owners prefer personal contacts to other means of communication, but that it is essential that the initial contact is a personal letter on paper. Furthermore, although price is always important, long standing relations is asked for. The buying companies need skillful experienced buyers that can provide more than just quick closures of deals..

This master thesis was a continuation of a previous study in the diesel exhaust characterization, which is part of the academical work embedded in the EMIR-1 project. The main objective of this thesis work was to finish the installation and make the proper modifications of the particulate mass measuring system located in one of the engine test cells at KTH, in order to be able to measure the mass of the particles from the exhaust of diesel engines.This experiment requires a diluted flow sample from the exhaust that should be sent to the device that makes possible the measurement of particle mass, called TEOM. In the first stage of this project, the objective was to study and make the proper modifications in the existing KTH diluter because there were several problems to obtain a constant dilution ratio from it during tests.This modifications were made and it resulted in a great improvement in the maximum inlet and outlet flow that this diluter can handle. Therefore another modification is proposed for controlling the inlet exhaust flow so it will be possible to regulate the dilution ratio and make it constant along a wide range of engine loads and speeds.The second and most important stage was to make particulate mass measurements possible by analyzing the frequency signal from the TEOM device. The idea was to obtain the frequency of oscillation from the tapered element in the TEOM, and therefore with the proper correlations, be able to predict the particulate mass concentration in the exhaust flow from the engine.An electrical problem in the TEOM circuit was detected and corrected, so the signal that carries the frequency from the TEOM can be analyzed properly.

This thesis studies whether private equity owned firms within the Swedish welfare sector distinguish themselves in terms of tax planning and short-termism from a control group consisting of other privately owned welfare firms. For the first time, the comparison is made on the entire welfare sector, between 14 matched pairs within education, health care and elderly care. We use financial metrics associated with tax planning and short-termism in sign tests to examine whether the private equity owned firms differ from our control group. The financial metrics tested are actual and paid tax rates, level of interest, book-tax gap, investments, personnel expenses per employee, and cash earnings. We find that the private equity owned firms in terms of tax planning only differ in the level of interest, while no notable differences are found in terms of short-termism..

This study aims to investigate how consumers perceive variety in grocery stores and further how private brands have affected consumers? perceptions of variety in grocery stores.The study focuses on the perceptions and attitudes towards variety and the impact of private brands on perceived variety. Hence, a qualitative rather than quantitative study has been used. Photo elicitation has been used in both focus groups and in-depth interviews, which have been the empirical data collection of the study. Scientific articles and books have also been used in the process.

The aim for the study was to examine a harwarder´s (combined harvester-forwarder) productivity when harvesting forest fuel in first thinning stands that contains Lodgepole pine and calculate the economy of the harvesting work and estimate the quality of the thinning . The field study area where located near Arvån, about 15 kilometres south ?east from the city of Lycksele. The field studies were taken place in three different stands. All tree stands had the same tree age, but the tree species combination and the density varied.

Swedish listed property companies report their investment properties under the standard IAS 40 that gives the opportunity to value investment properties to either historical cost or to fair value model. One problem with the fair value model is that there is no observable market price since the real estate market is far from complete which means that the price of the asset is hard to determine because of the limited information.IAS 40 gives companies the opportunity to choose between internal or external valuation and this study aims to show how the property companies? values appeared between the years 2007-2011. From the result we will study if there could be a difference in the outcome depending on if the company chose either internal or external valuation.To investigate this we observe all Swedish real estate companies listed on OMX Nordic Stockholm and their financial reports during this period of time and complement this information by interviewing people working with these matters in the property companies. The methodology for the study is therefore partly quantitative and partly qualitative since we collect data both from financial reports and from interviews.