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.

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.

The relationship between dividend policy and investment is a controversial area and the relationship between these two may differ depending on the company's priorities. The study examines this more closely by studying dividend policy's impact on investment and how it differs depending on the company?s market capitalization. The study is based on companies listed on the OMX Stockholm within the segments Large Cap and Small Cap, during the period between 2003-2012. Secondary data was obtained from each company's annual reports where relevant data was used to operationalized into measurable variables.

Many studies have pointed out that generosity depends on different things like gender, age and nationality. We wanted to see if predetermined factors like genetics also had an effect on the intention of generosity. There is a ratio between the index finger (2D) and ring finger (4D) that is determined by the levels of testosterone in the amniotic fluid and that have had some significant effect on personality attributes like musical and leadership skills. We wanted to see if that ratio had any effect on the intention of generosity. We experimentally examined a group of priest student and two groups of young handball players and let the groups answer a survey that included a sort of dictator game and we photo copied their hands to get their 2D:4D-ratio.

There are many elderly buildings, particularly those constructed during the million program, in need of renovations and plumbing replacement. An alternative to the traditional plumbing replacement is the relatively new and untested technique called relining. The purpose of the study is to thoroughly investigate the different types of relining that are currently available on the market to help enhance Peab?s knowledge before purchasing relining services. The theoretical part of this report is based on relevant information provided from companies, previous studies, investigations and reports within the area.

The SK 60 Aircraft has been a workhorse for the Air Force?s training of future pilots since the late 1960s. The aging SK60 aircraft is going out of style, and the system has merely a few years of total running time left. A replacement for the SK 60 needs to be implemented in the coming years, and the Armes Forces Flying School has been commissioned to conduct flight tests on suitable replacement systems. This study will conduct a system analysis of two aircrafts mentioned in the Flying Schools report.

Intellektuellt kapital anses av ma?nga vara en av de sto?rsta drivande faktorerna till fo?retags framga?ng och i litteraturen va?rderas den ofta som skillnaden mellan ett fo?retags marknadsva?rde och dess bokfo?rda va?rde. Market-to-book ratio a?r det relativa ma?ttet som beskriver denna skillnad och go?r det mo?jligt att ja?mfo?ra detta va?rde med andra fo?retag. Ma?let med denna uppsats a?r att underso?ka hur fo?retag redogo?r fo?r sitt intellektuella kapital och utreda hur detta reflekteras i fo?retags market-to-book ratio.

In this master thesis, the possibilities of customizing a low-cost microprocessor with the purpose of replacing an existing microprocessor solution are investigated. A brief survey of suitable processors is carried out wherein a replacement is chosen. The replacement processor is then analyzed and extended with accelerators in order to match set requirements.The result is a port of the processor Lattice Mico32 for the FPGA curcuit Xilinx Virtex-5 which replaces an earlier solution using Xilinx MicroBlaze. To reach the set requirements, accelerators for floating point arithmetics and FIR filtering have been developed. The toolchain for the processor has been modified to support the addition of accelerated floating point arithmetics.A final evaluation of the presented solution shows that it fulfills the set requirements and constitutes a functional replacement for the previous solution..

This study was a final thesis, for the bachelor program in civil engineering at theUniversity of Uppsala, which was made on behalf of Riksbyggen in Uppsala. Acomparative study of two stain renovation methods; tradition pipe replacement andrelining was done with an environmental perspective. A simplified life cycleassessment (LCA) was done according to the International Organization ofStandardization (ISO) with the LCA tool Eco-indicator 99, in order to be estimate theimpact on the environment. LCA is a method that follows a product or a system?from the cradle to the grave?, which means that all the environmental impact over alifetime is considered.The work was executed by using a stairway with nine apartments in a house called?Uppsala Hus 9? as a reference object, which was provided by Riksbyggen.

The heuristic methods used by the anti-trojan application TrojanHunter have been evaluated. The evaluation shows that the heuristic scan engine of TrojanHunter has a very good detection ratio and that the detection ratio can be even further improved by implementing the suggested improvements, the most important of which is a white list to avoid misidentifying files that are known not to be trojans..

The purpose of the study was based on scientific literature to describe the quality of life of persons who have undergone a total hip replacement. The method was a descriptive literature review. The results showed that pain was the most obvious change after surgery. Mild pain before surgery was strongly associated with mild pain after surgery. But despite less pain were experienced early, it took 1 year to achieve the full benefits of improved physical function.

Common wisdom dictates that because payment of dividends decreases funds available for investment, a high payout ratio is to be associated with low earnings growth. This notion has been challenged in recent years by empirical research that has found a positive relationship between payout ratio and future earnings growth, both on the aggregated market level and the company level in different countries. This study investigated the aforementioned relationship on the Swedish market by statistically analyzing future earnings growth as a function of payout ratio on a large sample of publicly listed companies over the period 1980 to 2011. The results are in line with those found in previous research and indicate that companies with high dividend payout ratio tend to experience strong future earnings growth. The results are robust to the presence of mean reversion, the use of an alternative accounting measure of earnings, non-symmetrical earnings growth cycles and alternative practices for dealing with outliers..

There are many elderly buildings, particularly those constructed during the million program, in need of renovations and plumbing replacement. An alternative to the traditional plumbing replacement is the relatively new and untested technique called relining. The purpose of the study is to thoroughly investigate the different types of relining that are currently available on the market to help enhance Peab?s knowledge before purchasing relining services. The theoretical part of this report is based on relevant information provided from companies, previous studies, investigations and reports within the area.

How debt affects companies is an issue that has received much attention. The fact that researchers disagree can make it hard for companies to choose a financingpolicy that maximizes the value of the firm and its return on equity. In a world with investors that are seeking to maximize profits the value of the firm can be affected differently by different economic conditions. The intention of this study is to answer these issues with quantitive methods, with focus on year 2010 and 2009, where the value of the firm is defined as P/E and P/B ratio. The outcome showed that liabilities only affected return on equity significant in one of four cases, and liabilites didn?t affect the value of companies significantly in any of these.

As changes occur more frequently in IT- and software development, it is important for the companies to meet the demands and needs of its customer. The companies have to be able to adapt themselves continuously in order till fulfill its customers changing needs in an effective way, which results in big changes of the companies? structures. The more traditional way of working is often replaced with more alternative approaches as a response to the reputable deficiencies of its predecessors. As an effect of the rapid change and development some companies now see big potential in switching to more Agile and flexible methods and some companies have no choice but to change their way of working.