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.

What role should science play in democracy? Political scientists often assume that it is possible to demarcate between ?instrumental? and ?moral? knowledge, and argue that citizens and/or politicians should use their moral knowledge to agree upon political goals and then apply the instrumental knowledge of scientists to achieve them. This straightforward view is challenged by writers in science studies, who identify three major problems in the use of science in democracy: uncertainty, risk and hidden values. They suggest that these problems could be solved through citizen participation.In this essay I perform an analysis of the internal logic of their suggestion. Is it likely that citizen participation enhances the democratic decision making process so as to reduce the problems? The internal analysis shows that it is rational to advocate citizen participation by reasons of legitimacy.

 This paper evaluates the effect of exchange rate risk on the sum of bilateral trade. To distinguish the effect between different types of countries, two groups are defined: advanced and developing economies. Economic theory on exchange rate risk and trade proposes ambiguous effects of increased volatility. However, the ex ante hypothesis is that developing economies are more sensitive to volatility. Contrarily to the hypothesis, the empirical results suggest that advanced economies would benefit up to twice as much from a removal of exchange rate risk.

In this essay, Risk and crisis management Conservation policy and normalization production, I discuss how societies, communities and individuals are responsible for the handling of catastrophes and crises. Risk and vulnerability analyzes are parts of modern risk and crisis management. The purpose of these analyzes is to prepare people and organizations for any crises. For managing this it is necessary to comprehend, be able to change mindset in creating concrete tasks and inform others.The purpose of this essay is to analyze modern risk and crisis management by studying empirical material, such as interviews, observations and literature. My aim is to combine these materials and study how they cooperate.One of the findings in this essay is that risk and vulnerability analyzes are of great complexity. These analyzes require a discussion in order to identify the development of the society's crisis management system, as well as the continued support of the individuals that have a responsibility for preventing and preparing their organizations..

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the status of Swedish real estate companies in terms of financial health and risk of financial distress. The background is the ongoing financial crisis, which partly can be derived from the American real estate sector. Publicly available accounting information from 16 listed real estate companies has been analyzed for a period of one year using financial ratios covering both the operational and financial activities. We find that the deceleration in the economy and in the real estate sector have forced the real estate companies to make large write downs, in line with the relatively new accounting rules, IFRS. Write downs are likely to reoccur during the following periods and real estate companies will therefore probably be forced to continue to show negative results.

The aim of this study is through a policy analysis to illuminate the decisions that the EU has taken to respond to the terrorist attacks in the US, Madrid and London and through this analysis try to explain the problem of each decision and find out if these decisions might risk the individual rights of the European Union?s citizens.In order to reach this purpose the following questions are to be answered: In what way has the EU?s decision-making process, regarding its fight on terrorism, been affected by the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London? What consequences may the EU?s decisions against terrorism have on the individual rights?The method that has been used is qualitative studies of literature and the main material is overarching policy documents from the EU.The conclusions are that the bombings in Madrid and London have increased the speed of the decision-making process and more areas have been included in the union?s fight against terrorism. If individual rights are at risk by the union?s decisions there are reasons to be concerned. But my conclusion is that the European Union has to have strong and effective instruments to answer to the threat of terrorism..

All companies face risk in their daily business. Internationalised companies tend to experience higher risk due to for example unfamiliar business environment than companies that act only on the national market. Estonia became independent as late as in 1991 and is therefore a new interesting market for many companies in neighbouring countries like Sweden. Risks that are most apparent for an internationalised company are political risk, currency risk, capital and interest rate risk, business risk and credit risk. Our intention of this study was to find out how Swedish companies acting on the Estonian market faced the different risks when entering the Estonian market and how they value the risks today.

The aim of this thesis has been to examine how the risk for the swine flu was represented in the Swedish Radio news broadcast Ekot 16.45 during different phases of the pandemic in 2009. We wanted to study how the risk was described in different discourses and periods? Were the participants in the reporting calming or warning the listeners in relations to different aspects of the swine flu? What consequences for the community were reported in the broadcasting?To find the answers to our questions, we analysed 13 features about the swine flu broadcasted in Ekot?s main news broadcast Ekot 16.45. We used critical discourse analysis inspired by Norman Fairclough.We identified four types of discourses in our text, a journalistic discourse, a medical discourse, a nationalistic discourse and an authority discourse. The main discourse was the medical one.

Municipal safety work is an issue frequently discussed. The new legislation about accident prevention obeys the Swedish municipality to present an action program for accident prevention. In Borlänge municipality there has been no sanctioned proposal for a program. This report presents the problems found and gives proposals for improvements in the future safety work. The guiding words should be unambiguousness, able to control and not too complicated.

Safety and risk management currently have a starting point based on the negative outcome of safety, thus the lack of safety. The starting point for the thesis is to find a way to measure the positive outcome of safety through ergonomic aspects regarding chemical plants that are covered of the Seveso II Directive.Through a literature study of safety and ergonomics fourteen key aspects of safety were found. Safety Performance Indicators (SPI's) are used to assess the fourteen identified proactive indicators of safety. An analysis in three steps - called risk status assessment - is design to give an SPI its value. A pilot study of the risk status assessment was performed at the ethanol producer Lantmännen Agroetanol in Norrköping, Sweden..

When constructing a road the risk of emission of substances from the used materials to the surrounding environment has to be evaluated. The aim of this study is to present a proposal for how to evaluate the risk of contamination as a result of emission from the materials in a road construction. The study is based on literature studies, an inventory and a questionnaire that examines how experts in governmental agencies, industries and universities evaluate the risk of contamination. The inventory indicates that guidelines for evaluating the risk of emission from secondary materials in a road construction do not exist. The conclusions from the questionnaire are: that there is no common way to evaluate the risk of contamination as a result of emission from materials in the road construction, there is no uniform interpretation of the terms "minor" and "significant" risk of contamination and that the evaluation is subjective.

The economic analysis of building contracts is an unexplored field within Law and Economics. This paper makes an attempt to cast some light over the subject and encourage to more research within the field. The main purpose has been to describe why the actual price in a public construction project often turns out to be higher than the contract price and offer a way of handle that risk. In the paper a model is set up that shows an optimal contract given expectations on actual price and gaps in contracts. Cost increases for the buyer can mainly be explained by two situations.

Ground work like blasting, piling and excavation has always had a great influence during the planning phase of a construction project since it can cause damages on adjacent buildings and have severe economic consequences. This thesis deals with how vibrations caused by ground work influence near-by buildings and what methods geotechnicians and construction entrepreneurs use to handle these risks.The purpose of this thesis is to explain risk management in relation to ground work. In order to achieve this I have used a qualitative method by interviewing a geotechnician and a ground work contractor who possess knowledge and experience useful to this thesis. The result shows that vibrations from ground work spread through the ground as seismic waves that cause displacements and packing in the ground visible in adjacent buildings as cracks and subsidence damages. Geotechnicians study ground work vibrations by means of ground investigations and experience from previous projects in order to produce a Risk analysis that entrepreneurs can use to reduce damages.

The purpose of this Bachelor Thesis is to investigate whether the introduction of IFRS, and in particular IAS 40 regarding fair value accounting of investment property, has lead to increased financial risk for Swedish real estate companies. Financial risk is measured using several financial risk ratios during the period 2000-2009, effectively covering the period before and after the introduction in 2005. The financial risk is found to actually have decreased significantly in comparison with the control group. The relative decrease supports the notion of a factor unique to the real estate companies at least partially driving the change, possibly IAS 40. However, this change is, due to the statistic method employed, only an indication of the direction of change, and consequently interpretations of the magnitude of change cannot be made.

ITT Flygt is a world leading company that mainly manufactures submersible pumps. A problem of ITT Flygt is that product development projects rarely manage to hold the estimated project time. It shows that something unexpected occurs in projects quite often, which results in delays. The delays can both be due to an optimistic time plan of projects and risks in product development projects which are not discovered at an early stage. This added with unforeseen delays makes it difficult for ITT Flygt to estimate the duration of their projects.The goal with the Master thesis is to examine a suitable method for simulation of project time.