The purpose of this thesis is to ascertain the main determinable factors of Swedish SMEs capital structure decisions and to investigate whether existing capital structure theories are applicable on Swedish SME financing. We have used panel data to run regressions of various capital structure determinants on three measures of capital structure; short- term debt, long-term debt and total debt. We found that growth opportunities, profitability and age are the most important capitalstructures determinants for our sample. Firm size shows a small explanatory result but the effective tax rate and the asset tangibility do not seem to explain the capital structure at all. Thematurity matching principle is considered significant..

It is the curriculum and the syllabus for history that decides what the classbooks will include. The intention with this paper was to found out what Swedish and Norwegian classbooks writes about the union between Norway and Sweden in 1814-1905. The result has been compiled from a study with teaching materials. Two Norwegian and two Swedish books which was written for the elementary school was used in the study. The text in these books has been analysed from a number of questions.

Domestic science is an interdisciplinary subject. Furthermore domestic science is a combination of theory and practice. The basic competence, a recommendation from ?The Swedish School Institution? (Skolverket), is to enter the secondary school with minimum grade G, (godkänd) in the basic themes: Swedish, English and Mathematic. Today there are many pupils finishing their secondary school without grade in one or more basic themes; Swedish, English and Mathematic.

The Swedish working-class author Ivar Lo-Johansson (1901-1990) wrote a collection of one hundred short stories between the years 1968-1972. His other productions, generally speaking, have partially different social reform purposes, but, according to himself, these short stories were written with the intention to be totally free of tendencies (even though he himself doubted that he succeeded with this).During the same period that these short stories were published, the Swedish social democrats were under the challenge of radical movements that, mainly on the radical left?s ideological foundation, had a relatively strong influence in Sweden, among other countries, from the mid 1960?s to the late 1970?s. Since Lo-Johansson mainly seemed to have supported the politics of the social democrats, the purpose of the investigation in this thesis has been to see if he ? in the three short stories: Vikingakärlek (1970), Rikslögnaren (1971) and Ansgars resa till Sverige (1972) ? is conveying an ideological use of history and basic political values that were used by the social democratic party during this time period.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate how contemporary Swedish picture-books describe ethnicity. The analysis is based upon eight books that were published during the period 1996 to 2006. The thesis is based upon a qualitative content analysis and a model of analysis that has been constructed with inspiration from Maria Nikolajeva and Pil Dahlerup and their conceptions of analyzing literature. The study?s theoretical framework is primarily based on the sociology of literature and the perspective of the society in literature.

This essay is written in order to expose the construction of collective identity in textbooks for Swedish as a second language. To help visualize the process that shapes and categorize sub-jects based on a relational identity formation I assume mostly from Ernesto Laclau and Chan-tal Mouffe's discourse analysis theory frame. The paper called it as discourse theory. There are two textbooks in Swedish as a second language to be studied. Based on the textual materi-al found in the textbooks I perform a discourse analysis involving mainly focus on relational identity construction.

Even though many states have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and sworn to protect human rights, viloations occur every day both in developed and developing countries. United Nations gave Sweden critique for not implementing the Convention conrerning article 11, which raises the question how respected the Convention is amongst other states? Does democracy contribute to a higher level of implementation?.

Major changes have occurred in the music industry the last twenty years which can betraced to various reasons like technological and economical problems. Meanwhile, theSwedish songwriters have had incredible success on the international music scene when itcome sto songs with commercial impact. Their success has been very present in the lastfew years and during the writing of this essay, we see no evidence that they shoulddecrease.The purpose of this paper is to analyze and clarify the factors behind the internationalsuccess of Swedish-produced music has had in recent years. We will also show theimportance of the success that characterized the 90?s and how it affects Swedishsongwriters success today. .

This paper studies how peer assessment is used as a strategy to improve young learners' results in Swedish as a school subject. Nine teachers are interviewed about their use of the method on 7-12-year-old pupils. Comparisons are made between the interviews and Swedish and international discussion on peer assessment. There are similarities between the practice of the teachers and what is said in the litterature about the method and its advantages and drawbacks. The teachers tend to emphasize the social aspects more, though.

Background: Power by force and threats used to be the common way to collect taxes, but this procedure is today completely different. It?s now more about building a mutual relationship and with help of laws and controls steer citizens and companies to pay the tax they owe. Thus the way to collect taxes have changed over the years, the collecting of taxes aren?t a popular task to do.

After the tsunami disaster in December 2004 many arguments were heared that one oft the major reasons behind the poor Swedish effort connected to the evacuation and health care of the Swedish citizens in Thailand right after the incident is the Swedish model with independent government authorities. By comparing the constitution, the political decision making tradition by the ministers and the handling of the catastrophe in the tree Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway and Finland, plus analysing the behaviour of the Swedish foreign and prime minister from a rational choose inspired individual decision making theory the research shows that there is no proof that a constitutional change in Sweden into the traditional model with government authorities controlled by the ministers alone would led to a more effective crisis handling by the government due to crises concerning Swedish citizens out states. Although the research shows that the constitution and the tradition of decision making in the government provides the basic condition of the ministers individual rational decision making.

The aim of the study is twofold, to generate a sensory profile of Swedish wine today and to investigate the opinion of both wine producers and wine experts on viticulture in Sweden and wine from grapes grown in Sweden, achieved through a contextual analysis comprising a literature study and interviews with wine producers in Sweden and Denmark and wine experts from Sweden and Germany, and a sensory analysis at the company Ipsos. ?Mixed methods? was the chosen research strategy as the semi-structured interviews gave qualitative results and the sensory analysis would give quantitative results displayed as spider charts. There is a lack of studies investigating how the Swedish wine is perceived by consumers and consumers might be unaware that the Swedish wine, established through ?trial and error?, is increasing in quality every season, creating a need to display the sensory profile of Swedish wine to strengthening the perception of Swedish white wine. This study shows that the Swedish white wine today is a wine with a fresh, citrusy and flowery aroma and a fresh, citrusy and green apple taste, however, a sensory analysis cannot show if the attributes are those that are desired by the customer, a consumer test is necessary to conclude that. Trends point towards locally produced products, one reason why Swedish wine has great potential, yet the future needs to be secured through job opportunities and education. Creating an approval system for Swedish wine is suggested as a future improvement, it is a common procedure in most wine regions.

In this thesis, the Swedish venture capital market and its profitability is analyzed. Venture capital is defined as capital that is invested in the early stages of a company's life cycle, in the two investment stages seed/start-up and expansion.A common view is that the profitability of Swedish venture capital has not been, is not and will probably not become high either. With this in mind, we try to answer to the following questions in this thesis:? What has the profitability of Swedish venture capital actually been historically?? Which reasons could be found in order to explain the historical returns for Swedish venture capital, and which factors has been identified in international comparative studies between venture capital markets?In order to answer these questions, data showing historical returns for the Swedish, European and American venture capital market has been gathered, an extensive literature study has been performed, and three interviews with participants from the Swedish venture capital market has been conducted.We conclude that the historical returns of Swedish venture capital is in line with the general view that they have been low. We also see a trend where Swedish venture capital funds that are not specialized in one investment stage generate lower returns than more specialized funds.

It is widely recognized that the town of Södertälje, a small Swedish town of 85 000 inhabitants, has alone received more war refugees from Iraq than the US and Canada have put together. Whilst writing this thesis had nearly 6000 Iraqi refugees sought their way to Södertälje since the US invasion in Iraq 2003.Nevertheless, life is not what the media and the government retail. Six of these Iraqi refugees who resided in Södertälje share their life stories in the following thesis. They discuss their escape from Iraq and the difficulties of living in the segregated parts of Södertälje where they solely speak Arabic and Assyrian, whilst learning Swedish at sfi (Svenska för invandrare, Swedish for immigrants). Another distress is related to the unsecure future in Sweden waiting ahead.      The aim of this thesis is to engage in, and highlight the studies of six sfi-students in their endeavor to learn Swedish, whilst struggling through Swedish bureaucracy and experiencing despair due to their situation and uncertain future.       .

The Swedish working-class author Ivar Lo-Johansson (1901-1990) wrote a collection of one hundred short stories between the years 1968-1972. His other productions, generally speaking, have partially different social reform purposes, but, according to himself, these short stories were written with the intention to be totally free of tendencies (even though he himself doubted that he succeeded with this).During the same period that these short stories were published, the Swedish social democrats were under the challenge of radical movements that, mainly on the radical left?s ideological foundation, had a relatively strong influence in Sweden, among other countries, from the mid 1960?s to the late 1970?s. Since Lo-Johansson mainly seemed to have supported the politics of the social democrats, the purpose of the investigation in this thesis has been to see if he ? in the three short stories: Vikingakärlek (1970), Rikslögnaren (1971) and Ansgars resa till Sverige (1972) ? is conveying an ideological use of history and basic political values that were used by the social democratic party during this time period.