In May 2004 eight former communist countries (EU-8) with close historical trade ties to Russia joined the European Union. According to integration theory, we expect that Russia ? a so called third country ? in some cases may suffer from trade diversion due to this. This thesis focuses on the possible effects on Russian trade resulting from the 2004 eastern enlargement of the European Union. It aims to find out whether any evidence of trade diversion can be found.

Over the last decade, the private insurance market has undergone a stable growth in turnover and growing demand for insurance products in all Member States of the European Union. Therefore, the creation of a single market in insurance will enable consumers to have access to wider choice of insurance products, and insurance companies to gain access to markets in various Member States and compete effectively. The EU legal framework for the insurance industry embraces the Treaty freedoms of services, establishment and capital, the EC Directives and the ECJ case-law. The present thesis identifies numerous factors that hinder the Community insurance market integration and offers possible remedies. The summary of the market obstacles is all-inclusive and reflects the responses to the questionnaires and the Commission surveys.

Managers operating within the dynamic society of today are said to rely on intuition when effective and quick decisions are to be made. This skill or phenomenon has aroused an interest within the academic world of management whom has explored intuition, its relation to decision making and its influencing factors, especially in the private sector. Intuitive decision making is however not isolated solely to this sector but also involved in decision making associated to the public sector. Therefore, the aim of the thesis is to investigate whether managers at the hospital Akademiska in Uppsala involve intuition in decision making and to what extent the factors time, amount of information, individual experience and decision complexity influence the intuition.The theoretical framework includes academic research regarding how intuition and rationality affect decisions, the concept of intuition and factors influencing the intuitiveness of decision making. Furthermore the theoretical discussion explores intuition connected to leadership, negative aspects of intuitive decisions and a comparison between different factors that separates public and private sector in terms of decision making.

Introduction: A general guideline was introduced on October first 2010 regarding a mortgage cap, limiting the degree of leverage of housing as collateral. Through the new guidelines the marked conditions concerning consumers? choice of mortgage has changed. The consumers are limited in the sense that they can?t only use mortgage when purchasing a house.

The business mission of Norra Skogsägarna is to achieve a profitable forestry for the private forest owners. With this as a background it is of interest for the forest owner association to know how forest owners think about voluntary retentions, the methods of increasing production and quality and if there are differences between those who have chosen to certify their forest and those who haven?t. This kind of knowledge is of importance, to in an effectively and adjusted way, help the forest owners achieve a profitable forestry. The objective of this master thesis is to increase knowledge about private forest owners? opinions of the methods of increasing production and quality and to what extent these methods are used.

Background: The Swedish Parliament passed a law change in late 2010, suspending the former requirement for all Swedish incorporated companies to have an auditor. The new limit values allow the smallest incorporated companies to dismiss the auditor of the company (or not appoint one in the case of a newly started company). The opinions of abolishing mandatory audit vary, and little research has been done post to the law change. However, a new situation has arisen, meaning the optional choice of voluntary audit, for some companies.Aims and research questions: The aim of the thesis is to examine the reasons behind voluntary audit in Sweden, as well as what value companies, having chosen audit, see in their auditor. The following research questions have been used in order to fulfill the aim of the thesis: ?Why do small private owner-led incorporated companies in Sweden voluntarily choose audit?? and ?What value does the voluntarily chosen auditor add to the companies??Methodology: The research questions were formulated after reviewing relevant literature and scientific articles regarding the topic of voluntary audit, as well as the recent law change in Sweden.

Uppsatsen undersöker vilken av den indirekta och den direkta metoden som bör användas vid prognostisering av den svenska inflationen baserat på kvartalsdata för perioden 1993:1-2005:4. Ytterligare en aspekt med uppsatsen är att ge ökad förståelse för hur inflationen i Sverige i allmänhet ska prognoostiseras. Prognoserna skapas med de respektive metoderna och jämförs därefter med faktisk inflation för att utvärdera vilken metod som ger minst prognosfel. De slutsatser som dras från undersökningen är att det inte är en av metod som strikt föredras vid prognostisering av den svenska inflationen. De metod som är bäst av den indirekta och den direkta beror på prognoshorisonten.

Abstract Syftet med uppsatsen är att empirisk testa om fondförvaltare uppvisar timing och selektivitetsförmåga, det vill säga om de har förmåga att förutse aktiemarknadens rörelse och att hitta vinnaraktier. Våra undersökningsdata sträcker sig under en tvåårsperiod och omfattar 40 globalfonders dagsavkastningar. Vi har utifrån två olika modeller undersökt om det går att påvisa förmågorna timing och selektivitet. Undersökningen genomförs via ett antal OLS?regressioner där timing och selektivitet kan påvisas.

This is an examination of the Swedish unemployment insurance system and the effects it has on the Swedish long-term unemployment. A search model is explained to give an understanding to the incentives of the unemployed. Different mechanisms that create unemployment and that could create long-term unemployment are investigated, but primarily the unemployment insurance is in focus.The Swedish unemployment insurance has undergone several changes the last fifteen years that have improved its efficiency. The introduction of a finite duration of unemployment insurance entitlement was an important step and so was the decrease in the replacement ratio. Even so, I assess that there is still room for improvements of the incentives to search for work among the unemployed.

Several studies have investigated the relationship between different measures of innovative activity, such as patent statistics and R&D expenditures and some have looked deeper into the differences between large and small firms regarding number of patents issued per employee or per R&D dollar. In this paper, the objective is to find out if there are any indications of a barrier to entry (due to economical factors, lack of knowledge etc) for small firms to get into the field of patent handling. The approach is to first set up a hypothesis based on some simple assumptions about how firms would make decisions about whether to apply for a patent or not and thereafter use econometric methods in an empirical investigation. The data used for this study are figures on number of employees, number of patents granted and R&D expenditures for the Swedish firms in the pulp and paper industry. The main conclusion is that, based on the analysis of the data from this rather limited group of firms, no such barrier can be seen..

The transition from a planned economy to a market economy was initiated in Russia in the beginning of the 90s. The three components: privatization, liberalization and stabilization constitute the trinity of the transition theory. This thesis has its focus on the privatization, that also can be referred to as a piratization of Russia. The purpose of the thesis is to explain what went wrong with the privatization, and also why it went wrong. A few men, called oligarchs, got their hands on great wealth which has lead to an abuse of power.

The project is a practical and theoretical test of IP telephony with Skype in order to form a base for a comparison between IP-Telephony with Skype and the Public Switched Telephony Network (PSTN). PSTN is the common standard that most of us use for telephony today. The objective for the study is to simplify the choice between PSTN and IP-Telephony for the Swedish private customer user group. The project is supposed to answer the following questions. - How easy is it to start using IP-telephony with Skype? - How is the quality of IP-telephony compared to PSTN? - Are all services provided by PSTN available and accessible using the IP-solution? - How are the usability and the availability of support with IP telephony? - Is IP-telephony a cheaper solution and in that case under which circumstances? Within the project a collection of practical and theoretical tests have been performed to be able to form an opinion on the IP-solution in the following areas, installation, function, quality, usability, costs, accessibility and security. In order to study usability, a test group of ten persons have been used to evaluate the usability of the system.

After the two big hurricanes called ?Gudrun? (2005) and ?Per? (2007) in the south of Sweden, some landowners planted Douglas fir instead of the traditional Norway spruce and Scots pine. They did it for different reasons. Some of them spreading their "risk", others because they wanted better growth or to obtain a more storm-resistant stand and trees more protected against rot. In this study, survival and growth were examined on Douglas fir in 21 different locations, owned by private landowners in southern Sweden.

Through trading with countries that have a relative aboundant supply of labor, Sweden changes it's effective supply of labor, in a Factor Content perspective. This essay does two Factor Content analyses, one for year 1995 and one for 2000. The first comparison of these analyses shows that Sweden exports about 27 600 labor-years more year 2000 than 1995. However, since Factor Content analysis arguably underestimates the imported labor, some assumptions are made in order to correct for this. This correction has great importance for the final analysis.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om ryssladsspecifik räntevolatilitet smittar av sig på de baltiska staterna. Efter den asiatiska krisen 1997 är contagion ett av det mest debatterade ämnena inom internationell finansiell ekonomi och definieras som kriser som smittar av mellan regioner. Metod: 1998 utförde Sebastian Edwards en studie baserat på en bivariat GARCH-modell där han undersökte om volatilitet i den korta räntan sprids från Mexico till Argentina och Chile. Jag följer Edwards (1998) metoder för att undersöka om Baltikums räntevolatilitet är påverkad av rysslandsspecifik volatilitetsspridning. Resultat: Med bristande tillgång till långa tidsserier för emerging markets kan jag inte påvisa någon volatilitetsspridning.