The aim of this thesis is to discuss and analyse the American cotton subsidies? effect on the world market in general and developing countries in particular. The amount of U.S. subsidies is substantial compared to most other countries, but a great deal of the effect is due to the USA?s significant share of the market.

Purpose: The aim with the report is to investigate if the South East Asian customer on the food processing market base their investments on Total Cost of Ownership and if so, which are the cost drivers considered most vital. Moreover, do these cost-drivers diverge from the perception FP Ltd has, and if so, can a Total Cost of Ownership-model help to achieve a mutual understanding? Methodology: First a descriptive approach will be taken, identifying FP Ltd?s employers? perception on how to meet the customer. This will later be compared to our empirical findings of the actual customer behaviour in Thailand and Vietnam. Thorough analyse of the gap between the two parts will give us the outcome whether or not FP Ltd will have any use of presenting a quantitative model justifying their higher price.

We have by Statistics Sweden (SCB) been given the task of using different dynamic regression models in order to forecast service price index for sea transport. The aim is to see whether these models provide better forecasts than those previously used. This essay aim to identify, estimate and evaluate the selected prediction models. Through our data material we were given access to 28 sightings of sea transport index during the period of 2004 q1 to 2010 q4. We have chosen to evaluate three different transfer function models, one ARIMA model and one naive forecasting model. The input variables we decided to test in our transfer function models were the price of petroleum products, the port activity in Swedish ports and the lending rate of Swedish Central bank. The results of our study suggest that transfer function models generally provide better models than the ARIMA model and the naive forecast model.

AbstractMaster Thesis in business administration, School of Business and Economics at the Linneaus University, financial control, spring 2010Authors:Stefan Hellman and Ewa Warnquist Supervisor:Magnus Willesson Title: Reward systems - a study of public companies? variable compensation system Background:Our interest of the variable compensation system in public companies was brought by the recent extensive discussions of bonuses in the time of a financial crisis. This has led to that the word bonus has been given a negative connotation and we wanted to find out how the system of variable compensation is structured in the companies at Stockholm Stock Exchange. Problem:How is the variable compensation system structured in public companies? Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to study how the variable compensation in public companies is structured.

 AbstractDate:                                  2009-06-03Level:                                 Master thesis in Business Administration, 15 pointsAuthors:                            Branka Milencovici            Deniz SolmazTutor:                                Ulla PetterssonTitle:                                  The Swedish code of Corporate Governance - How the code administers in larger stock firms.Problem:                           The Swedish code follows the value of "comply or explain" when firms depart one or several rules, the reasons should be explained in the corporate report. The code does not include reasons for differences, it's up to the management themselves to take action. Is it possible to see if the code has been administered? Do differences prevent? Which are the most common? Is there any motivation?  Purpose:                           The main purpose with this essay is to study how Swedish firms administer the rules of the code in their corporate reports.Method:                            The method for this study is a deductive and qualitative approach. First we studied theory to understand the subject.

This thesis tries to define factors that impact upon the feeling of exclusivity for users on travelorganizers websites. We have identified seven key factors that we believe impact this feeling andthose factors are newsletters, special offers/auxiliary services, registration/limited information,price, limited number of seats on a journey, deals for members and personal service. To researchthis we have conducted a questionnaire and performed interviews with people that are familiarwith travel organizers websites. To create an understanding for the results we have studied usercenteredweb design, affective design and the meaning of pictures. The results show that personalservice and price are important factors to make users feel that they get their requirements andwishes met.

The Swedish consumer electronic industry has recently experienced an increasingly intensive price war. The price war has forced some operators in the business to declare bankruptcy, as the only way to compete has been by driving down prices. A challenge that retail chains in the consumer electronics industry is facing is to increase their margins. If store personnel can success with upselling, the companies will increase their profits. The purpose of this paper is to examine if the sales people in the consumer electronic industry can influence the customer to buy a more expensive product and what the effects the upselling has on the customers' attitudes.

In the post-war era many European countries were recovering from the ravages of the bombings of the second world war destroying whole countries. Sweden being neutral was spared the destruction of war but instead we demolished almost as much housing all by ourselves. A social program was modeled to modernize the country and to drag the swedes out of poverty by building one million apartments in just ten years and demolishing the old, dilapidated working-class neighborhoods. The traumatic events of the demolition of large areas of both the central and the outskirts of most Swedish cities is still very much present in the collective memory of people today and the new modernistic districts are still paying the price of that, more than fifty years later. Today these modernistic districts are in need of repair, and they are often homes to groups alienated from society making their reputation even worse.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what consequences the discussed Balken-case have had with regards to freeze-out prices decisions for cash bids. In order to evaluate this, a comparison with a previous study is made. Last but not least, the aim is also to see what kind of arguments the minority successfully can make use of in order to reach a higher freeze-out price nowadays. Underlying the results is basically an empirical survey based on arbitrations disclosing the tendencies after the Balken-case compared to before. The empirical investigation shows that practice has become more clear and uniform after the settlement of the Balken-case where a movement from theoretical values towards market prices is recommended.

Information technology and globalization has led to an increasing competition and service production has been more and more independent of locations. This has made a market of outsourced telephone costumer service possible. Due to high establishment the market has been saturated and with that price has sunk. Customer companies have the last few years got more negative to outsourcing of their telephone customer service as they through operating the customer service internally want to get closer to their customers.In the empirical study the writers try to figure out which companies the callcenters should try to aim towards to get long and profitable cooperation. This will be done through deducing guiding principles from theories about how different factors around companies costumer service should look like.

Latent heat storage is a way to store thermal energy when a phase change material undergoes a phase change. The advantage of latent heat storage is the capability to store more energy per mass unit than other heat storage methods. The most commonly used phase change in latent heat storage is the transition between solid and liquid. Phase change materials can be divided into organics, inorganics and eutectics.In the Nordic electricity market the price of electricity is set every hour by Nordpool spot, which leads to price fluctuations because of changes in demand. The main goal of this report is to create a latent heat storage system in a single-family home and investigate the possibility to save money by charging the latent heat storage system when the price of electricity is low, and discharge when the price is high.The thermodynamic model consisted of a ?tube-in-tube? heat exchanger with phase change material in the outer tube and water as the heat transfer fluid in the inner tube.

Traditional product features such as price, quality and supply service have been extended and nowadays includes environmental aspects as well. It raises new and increasing demands on haulier companies. The transport sector is responsible for a large part of the pollutants causing today?s environmental problems. The business is being closely monitored and to operate environmental friendly is seen as one of the most important elements for the industry?s future development.

With this essay we want to describe the transformation process that the real estate owner has to go through to sell the current rented flats to tenant. We also want to provide an understanding how the valuation is performed in the transformation process and highlight the issues that affects the price in the valuations. In the essay we would like to see if the valuation and the transformation process differ in a public real estate company compared to a private real estate company. Based on this we have asked us the following question to answer: -Is there any differences in how real estate?s are valued in the transformation process between public real estate companies and private real estate companies? We have used a qualitative approach to keep our main question.

The aim of this study is to examine how European companies? Stock price is affected by an announcement about foreign direct investment in one of the BRIC countries. Another aim for the study is to examine if the market reacts differently to the three modes of entry methods in a given BRIC country and to examine if the market reacts differently to different European countries. The study also set out to answer if there were any effects of the three modes of entry that was visible a short time after the announcement. To answer and examine this, the authors used the event study approach. The study was conducted with a sample of 47 companies from France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Germany.

Bakgrund: Affärspressen publicerar dagligen rekommendationer och riktkurser från aktieanalytiker och dess analyser kan anses ligga till grund för investeringsbeslut hos såväl privata som institutionella investerare. Aktieanalytikers förmåga att prognostisera aktiekurser är ett outforskat område med endast ett fåtal publicerade studier på variabeln riktkurs. Tidigare studier fokuserar på att utvärdera träffsäkerheten i prognoserna men få av dessa bidrar till förståelse kring vad som påverkar prognosfelens storlek.Syfte: Syftet med studien är att analysera aktieanalytikers förmåga att prognostisera framtida aktiekurser.Genomförande: Studiens deduktiva ansats gör att resultat från tidigare studier ligger till grund för formulering av forskningsfrågor och utformning av tänkbara påverkansfaktorer för träffsäkerhet. Träffsäkerheten i riktkurserna analyseras via regressionsanalys där det absoluta prognosfelet är beroende variabel medan de formulerade påverkansfaktorerna är förklarande variabler. Vidare studeras en eventuell närvaro av överoptimism i prognoserna genom att undersöka fördelningen av det relativa prognosfelet via T-test.Resultat: Aktieanalytikers riktkurser påverkas av flertalet faktorer, där ett bolags storlek och beta uppvisar tydligast samband med träffsäkerheten.