The aim of this study is two folded. We wish to investigate if there is a value premium from hedging jet fuel exposure for American and European airlines. We also seek to answer if airlines can affect their probability to default by using Risk Management. During the period 2003 ? 2006 there existed a value premium for airlines that hedged their expected future consumption of jet fuel.

In the fall 2011 a new grading scale will be implemented in the Swedish school. A government bill suggests a change of the scale from a three- to a six-point scale. The students will also be graded from the sixth class instead of today?s eighth. From the first year of the compulsory school the pupil will get a written judgment.

During recent years, financial innovation has given rise to numerous structured investment opportunities aimed towards the general public. These have enabled private investors to engage in high-risk investments offering as much as 400 per cent leverage while oftentimes not fully having grasped the risk involved. The issuers of these securities have been criticized for using advertising of a too aggressive and misleading nature.By presenting 819 potential investors with two different investment opportunities yielding the same return over a six day period, we have aimed to assess whether the inclination of being affected by judegmental heuristics varies with factors such as knowledge, overall attitude towards the asset class, risk appetite and experience from previous investments.We have observed that investors' perception of the attractiveness of an investment can be distorted by altering the information presented to the investor. However, our findings show that this tendency decreases with an increased level of knowledge, experience and risk appetite..

To understand the motives, and perhaps more importantly the barriers, for farmers to convert from conventional to organic farming is of great interest for policy makers as well as for academics. In Sweden and in other EU countries, proposed targets of the area in organic farmland have failed to be reached in spite of different kinds of policy measures. Most studies agree that the average profitability seems to be comparable to or better in organic than in conventional farming. This would indicate that there must be other factors of importance which can explain the low particiapation rate. A higher perceived risk in organic farming with respect to yield and price is frequently brought up as a potential explanation within a qualitative framework.

This paper presents a project and literature overview about how risk management and quality sometimes goes hand in hand and sometimes in two different directions. Meaning that the risk management can affect product or process quality differently depending on what risks an organisation chooses to control.The purpose with this paper is to get a deeper understanding about how risk and quality works together with IT-support and therefore we have been actively participating in a project with a risk management company called Zert. A literature study and a qualitative interview study have also been undertaken to see what the customers and the other researchers have written, to be able to make proper conclusions on the subject.To easily work together and get the information that was needed, four methods where used. Besides the qualitative interview and literature study the think-out-loud, card sorting and a variation on the extreme programming method where used to help visualize and improve communication both with Zert, the costumers and among ourselves.Zert is a risk management company that helps other organisations to control their different types of risks that they might be taking, by offering a system where the risk management process is held and providing consulting services by helping within the processes. Both Zert and their customers see the communication, knowledge and teamwork as something important as well as the quality within the work, processes and the end result.

The purpose of this study is to further develop the understanding of Nextopia, the belief that the next product will always be better, and the effects it has on Word of mouth, both oral (WOM) and electronic (eWOM), and investigate possible causes of this effect. This has been made through an experimental study of responses to two mineral water ads, with a manipulated time frame. First, this thesis supports the fact that there is a general Nextopia-effect on customers being exposed to a future product, which makes them evaluating the product higher in terms of feelings, attitude and intention. Further this study shows that there is also a Nextopia-effect on WOM and eWOM, by customers being more likely to recommend a future product rather than a current one. This propensity to recommend the product also has a relationship with responsibility, which correlates much stronger with WOM than eWOM.

Forskning har indikerat att individer med högt välbefinnande är bättre på att bemöta stress. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka vilka faktorer som skiljer individer med högt välbefinnande från dem med lågt välbefinnande, samt om deltagarna med högt välbefinnande har en bättre förmåga att hantera stress samt balansera krav och kontroll. 184 personer, varav de flesta kvinnor, har fått fylla i Ryff Psychological Well-being scale, Perceived Stress Scale och Job Content Questionnaire för att mäta välbefinnande, upplevd stressnivå och balansen mellan krav och kontroll. Två grupper skapades, en med lågt (n=20) och en med högt välbefinnande (n=20). Det framkom att gruppen med lågt välbefinnande ansåg sig ha signifikant lägre kontroll än gruppen med högt välbefinnande (p=.015).

The main purpose of this study was to inquire into personality and the state anxiety in relation to career decidedness scale among students in upper secondary school. The participants were 124 students in three grades and respectively non vocationally oriented classes. The participants were asked to grade themselves on a scale in relation to the statements regarding, state of decidedness for career choice, personality (NEO FFI, Costa & McCrae, 1985. Sweden, Gerontologic Center) and anxiety (AnTI, Wells, 1994). The results showed no significant relationship between personality and state of anxiety that could be connected to the decidedness for career choice.

The structure and performance of grocery distribution in Sweden has changed profoundly since the second world war. Increasing access and usage of the private car, in combination with an accommodating town planning has enhanced the exploitation of scale economies within distribution firms. There is, however, some ambiguity concerning the overall efficiency of the distribution system when the costs associated with travelling and purchasing performed by households are treated as an integrated part of the total distribution cost function. The purpose of this master thesis is to develop the foundation of a spatial optimisation model, which defines the most efficient distribution system. The underlying idea is that the optimal localisation and size of grocery stores is a function of economies of scale within the firms weighed against distributions costs within the households, such as transportation costs.

In April 2010 Vägverket (the Swedish National Road Agency) andBanverket (the Swedish National Railway Agency) will merge intoTrafikverket (the Swedish National Traffic Agency). Trafikverket willassume unified responsibility for the risk management that atpresent is responsibility of Vägverket and Banverket separately. Atpresent, as it will be shown in this thesis, Vägverket and Banverketshare the same theoretical background for risk management but usedifferent implementations often within the same agency. The use ofdifferent implementations results in a reduced transparency of therisk management both within and outside the agencies: this willbecome even more problematic when they will be fused intoTrafikverket.The aim of this thesis is to review the current risk managementmethodologies used at Vägverket and Banverket and to suggest aunified tool for the risk management at Trafikverket. This will bedone by focusing in particular on construction projects, one fromVägverket (Partihallsförbindelsen) and one from Banverket(Nynäsbanan).

Socialt stöd bidrar till mindre risk för yrkesrelaterad utbrändhet. Var tredje lärare uppvisar inom sina första arbetsår symptom på utbrändhet. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka samband mellan socialt stöd och utbrändhet hos grundskolelärare. Totalt deltog 71 respondenter i Stockholm via enkäter. Socialt stöd mättes via Berlin Social Support Scale och utbrändhet mättes med Shirom Melamed Burnout Measure.

Stress är idag ett område som är allt mer omdiskuterat och anses ha inverkan på den psykiska hälsan. Många studerande på universitetsnivå upplever någon gång under utbildningen stress, och detta kan bland annat förklaras utifrån tidspress, ny stad samt ekonomi. Syftet med denna studie var att ta reda på huruvida stress hos studenter kan förklaras utifrån self-efficacy och fysisk aktivitet, samt om det finns någon skillnad i upplevd stress mellan manliga och kvinnliga studenter. Det var 76 av 92 tillfrågade studenter som svarade på hela enkäten (39 män och 37 kvinnor) som innehöll två standardiserade tester, General Self-Efficacy Scale respektive perceived stress scale. Resultatet visade ett signifikant samband mellan variablerna stress samt self-efficacy.

Internationaliseringen har ökat under de senaste åren, och företag väljer att lägga delar av verksamheten utomlands. Tidigare forskning undersöker sambandet mellan denna diversifiering och dess konsekvenser för företagen. Gränsöverskridande diversifiering och företagsförvärv bör enligt tidigare forskning ge en lägre systematisk risk då risken sprids ut över flera marknader.Syftet med studien är att se om tidigare forsknings resultat går att tillämpa idag när svenska företag gör gränsöverskridande företagsförvärv. Vi har valt att applicera en event study-metodik för att undersöka detta samband enligt marknadsmodellen. Studien undersöker 66 svenska fall av gränsöverskridande företagsförvärv, gjorda under perioden 2005 ? 2007.Resultatet visar att tidigare empiri, att företagen skulle ha lägre systematisk risk efter ett gränsöverskridande företagsförvärv, inte går att tillämpa idag på de svenska företagen.

The aim of this small thesis is to investigate if the probability of business failure is higher at the time of divestment than at the time of acquisition for portfolio companies that have been subject to private equity ownership. The background for this thesis is the widespread critique aimed at private equity firms, claiming that they increase the risk in their portfolio companies. We have performed a study of 53 buyout transactions, involving Swedish manufacturing companies, covering a time span of 13 years, from 1995 to 2007. We find evidence of an increased risk of business failure for the portfolio companies with a short forecasting horizon (within one year). The absolute increase in the sample is however small.

The thesis had its starting point in the first paragraph of the eleventh chapter in the Swedish social services act, which discusses the immediate risk assessments that has to be made when the social services receive a report about a child. The thesis highlights an area that has received a lot of attention in media since the spring of 2014, when an eight year old girl was fatally abused by her legal guardians. The social services had at the time received a report about the girl but it was left unread. This tragic case has brought attention to the routines used by the social services for dealing with reports and risk assessments. This thesis was conducted through individual interviews with social workers working with children and families in the social services, with the aim to acquire an enhanced understanding of how social workers perform immediate risk assessments and what these assessments are based on.