This thesis examines the impact that the Euoropean Agricultural Policy has had on the tobacco regime during the years from the start of the Common Market Organization for Tobacco in 1970 til the days of today. The Truman method has been employed to estimate the degree of change of trade creation or trade diversion on the domestic market and also on the worldmarket. From these facts an analysis has been made to investigate how and if a new reform of the CMOT will affect the European tobacco market. Through the CMOT, the European Commission has tried to rise the quality level and the prices of raw tobacco growing in Europe. The european market value for tobacco has been rising and a marginal grade of of trade creation within the union and a grade of trade diversion to third countries has been shown since the implementation of the tobacco regime.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how Swedish independent record labels, or indie labels, fared on the Japanese market. The research questions were based on how Swedish independent record labels establish themselves on the Japanese market and how the cultural differences between the nations affect the business relationship. It was decided to execute a case study on two Swedish independent record labels and the Swedish export council for music. The ones chosen as study objects were B & B Records, Razzia Records and Export Music Sweden. The conclusions were that the indie labels need to understand the importance of personal business relationships when trying to get established on the Japanese market.

The aim of this study is to investigate wether the participatory democracy is a threat or a complement to the representative democracy. To achieve my purpose I will focus on two different lokal councils, the civil council in Hovsjö and the youth council in Västra Skogås, which have been objects of the urban policy in 1998. The theoretical framework on which this study is based consists of the participation democratic theory, representative democratic theory and implementation theory. By problemizing these theoretical frameworks in comparison with eachother I will mapp how these two lokal councils were implemented. The research question is: In what way was the civil council and the youth council a complement or threat to the representative democracy? In which way was it difficult to implement them?The method used for this purpose is a qualitative comparative case study.

This is a project in Entrepreneurship and Creativity on masters? degree. The purpose was to verify whether the Swedish retail trade within the beauty care business was ready for an in-troduction of colour cosmetics. Through the qualitative research grounded theory, I made several phone interviews with independence retail traders within the Swedish beauty care business. The selection of respondents is based on statistical facts and geographic coverage of Swedish beauty care shops.

This paper will answer which factors are important for the business relation between a small Swedish import company and a Chinese contractor. The problem is based partly in theories that points to cultural and organizational differences between Sweden and China, and partly in current examples from Swedish companies. The relevant data has been collected by interviews with three small Swedish companies that are currently using Chinese contractors.The result is that the differences between the countries and organizations exist, but that they do not interfere with the inter-company relations. The conclusion is that our result contradictsthe established theories in the field, and that a more comprehensive investigation is warranted..

The purpose of this study is to examine the implementation of the Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, CEDAW, in Uppsala local council and county council. The aim is to examine how the respondents, in their daily work, understand and implement the convention as well as how they consider the prerequisites for a successful implementation. The study was conducted using qualitative interviews with three civil servants and four politicians. The theoretical approach was implementation theory whose concepts willingness, comprehension and capability were used as tools for the analysis. The results portray CEDAW as a well-known treaty amongst the respondents but at the same time absent in local politics and everyday work.

The organized and controlled form of collecting consumption taxes and toll from the import and export trade goes back to the 17th century in Sweden. The customs administration and procedure were regulated by royal announcements, and the majority of the documents found in the customs archives represent thus records stipulated by such notifications. The customs archives can be used for research on several levels; the announcements reflect currents within both the domestic and foreign politics, while the account lists for financial statistics portray the extent of the trade. The various lists of compilation can be further used to follow for instance the development of different units of measurement, the expansion of tax rates, the value of trade goods or the changes in monetary units or systems. The diaries, architectural plans of the customs offices and maps of the toll areas place the customs officials and their work within the local scenery.The thesis focuses on archives deriving from customs located at harbors and on the Swedish-Norwegian border in the county of Dalarna.

The bachelor's thesis is to examine the explanatory factors affecting the choice of capital structure in real estate companies. The analysis is based on data collected from the main financial reporting from 2007; all listed real estate companies listed on Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish stock market. Based on previous research and theories, we have defined five independent variables that are linked to the debt ratio, which are: profitability, growth, firm size, cost of debt and operational risk. The statistical tests have resulted in that we can say with certainty that profitable firms tend to have a lower debt to equity ratio. We can also say with certainty that property companies with high interest costs have a high level of indebtedness..

Bakgrunden till detta arbete är att Bioenergi i Luleå AB måste tillmötesgå kundkraven för att behålla sina marknadsandelar och ha möjlighet att utöka dessa. På senare tid har de stora kunderna börjat efterfråga bränslepellets som är certifierad enligt Forest Stewardship Council, FSC. Examensarbetets syfte var att hjälpa Bioenergi med framtagandet av en Forest Stewardship Council Chain of Custody certification. I den inledande kartläggningen användes i huvudsak intervjuer och observationer för att studera de anställda och tillverkningen. För att identifiera aktiviteter och brister i Bioenergis system studerades även interndokumentation och relevant litteratur.

The aim with this independent degree project of master thesis is to find what the user opinions of the intranet in a county council is. The paper seeks how the question about how the culture in the organisation was affected by the use of the intranet. An important part is to explore the expectations and acceptance of the intranet and get a picture of which functions and services support day-to-day work with good quality. One goal is to find out how the intranet users feel that the communication, information and usability can be developed.The focus group interview is a qualitative method that has been applied for gathering data from the respondents, who participate in the investigation from the county council. The used method is unstructured focus groups containing the three dominating categories of staff in the county council.

Abstract The internationalisation of a company is enabled by integration of markets. New markets mean new revenues, but also demand capital to finance the expansion. To bring in new capital may offer new possibilities but also higher debt-equity ratios, which affect how external interested parties value the company. This thesis, inspired by previous and mainly US based research, researches the debt-equity ratio of Swedish multinational and domestic companies, sampled from the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The research questions have focused on the impact of certain internationalisation variables on the debt-equity ratio; how does the debt-equity ratio differ between international and domestic companies? Can a difference be explained by the degree of internationalisation? Can a difference be better explained by the presence of international ownership? By measuring the concept internationalisation as both trade and presence, the questions were operationalised into four hypotheses.

Research in international trade situations has mainly focused on understanding the exporter?s actions and has showed ways on how these can be optimized. Although the importer in most cases, until this day, has been left outside this focus, it has been showed that the importer often is the active participant in an international dyad. It is the importer who is actively seeking suppliers for its production or distribution. Based on previous research in the area, the following study identifies the factors that are vital to the importer for satisfactory relations.

This thesis aims to analyze the similarities and differences in how identity is constructed by the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament regarding the Polish membership and the potential Turkish membership of the European Union. The construction of identity is analyzed through a social constructivist perspective where identity is constructed by distinguishing ?us? from ?them?. The research metod used is a qualitative text analysis. The arguments of identity are taken from the Commission?s and the Council?s documents, as well as from the debates of the European Parliament.

Increasing volatility and less political intervention from the CAP in the market price of wheat is making it more difficult than in the past for Swedish farmers to determine the price at which they should sell their wheat. In the past, the Swedish farmer-owned company Lantmännen has traditionally set a guideline price for Swedish wheat every year to which farmers could adapt, but ceased doing so last year. Therefore this study sought to identify the parameters on which the price of wheat is dependent on by using a reduced form model. The perspective adopted was that of farmers. The model proved able to identify the main factors determining the annual price fluctuations in wheat, with all variables included having an impact on the wheat price, except export quantity in the previous year.

This essay is about the European union freetrade treaty negations with Mercosur. I have in this essay used a qualitative content analysis, to study from the EU perspective the reasons to why, the EU and Mercosur suspended the free trade treaty negations 2004, and after several years resumed the negotiations again in 2010. The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding from the EU perspective of why free trade negotiations were suspended and then resumed. In order to achieve a deeper understanding of this event, I have applied neorealism and neoliberalism on the explicit statements and the implied actions, as these theories may provide different explanatory power of implied causes of negotiations.I have come to the conclusion that the theoretical perspectives can indeed explain explicit statements and implicit actions for suspended and resumed negotiations with Mercosur. The implicit reasons for suspended negotiations are among others that the EU has an egoist thinking concerning a free trade treaty.