Investment aid is a part of the Rural Area Programme, which contains support to Swedish agriculture and the countryside. There is a new programme every seventh year and SLU (Swedish University of Agriculture) has the mission to perform the evaluation of the previous programme, which lasted between 2000 -2006. The investment aid's aim is to support investments that, among other things, support the adaptation or conversion to more environmentally friendly production methods, improves the product quality, develops new or complementing activities, and improves the environment and the animal- and working environment. The question is if it's only money that matters for these kinds of investments to be done and what has happened with the money that was paid? This thesis investigates how the investment aid has affected the receivers.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate the importance of the school library in a selected junior high school. My investigation is based on both theoretical and empirical studies. The aim of the theoretical part is to create a platform and refer to thoughts, roles and laws concerning the activity of the school library. The empirical investigation consists of two parts: questionnaires among students and teachers, plus interviews with students, teachers, headmaster, school librarian and the management of education. Everybody shows a positive attitude towards the school library and considers it important for the students exams.

This study focused on how local politicians in Kalmar perceive journalists and their intertwined relationship. We based our study on the theoretical understanding of today?s media-centric democratic society. The ?adversary model? offered an understanding of the intricate relations between politicians and journalists.

Every year, Swedish municipalities transfer considerable amounts of profit from public housing companies to the owner municipality. Municipalities are allowed to do this, provided that the money is used to pay for certain purposes. But there are no legal repercussions if they do not comply. Not all municipalities choose to transfer profits. Based on partisan theory, this difference could be explained by the political governance of the municipality.

Today many industrial companies invest a lot of resources on research and development to resist the tough competition on the global market. This leads to a high risk game when the companies start many development projects, with uncertain outcome where some of the projects have to be terminated prematurely. The main purpose with this study is to identify factors, both internal and external, that influence the decision to terminate projects prematurely in Swedish development projects. Factors mentioned in the literature will be compared with case studies on three Swedish industrial companies to demonstrate the most important ones when taking such decisions. First a literature study was made to identify basic terms, a general project model and factors affecting the decision.

In a time when economic crises relieving one another, it is especially interesting to study how companies choose to finance their operations. Since there is a lack of studies that include banks, and their capital structures, with the rest of the finance market, it is uncertain whether the theories of capital structure are applicable. Therefore, this essay aims to study whether there is any correlation between the two variables debt-equity ratio and return on equity (ROE) for Swedish corporations on the finance market.In accordance with the theorems that the professors Modigliani and Miller filed, in 1958 and 1961, which describes a clear link between debts, increase corporate value through the tax shield and indirectly increased yields. Although these theorems are the foundation of the modern research they focus on perfect markets. Therefore, this paper has also chosen to place great emphasis on theories such as Trade-off and Pecking-order.

The number of residential fires has not declined sufficiently since the smoke alarm entranced the Swedish homes, fires lead to devastating consequences in which possessions, homes and worst of all human lives are at stake. Every year, about 80 people get killed and more than 500 get´s injured in residential fires, often due to lack of safety equipment. The number of fires caused by electrical appliances has risen and taken over a period of ten years the fire caused by a forgotten stove has increased by 70 percent. Preventing the risk that a fire would start on the stove would saves money, worry and most importantly, lives..

Swedish school children exhibit deteriorating knowledge results in terms of reading comprehension. Previous research shows that a method to increase the level of knowledge is the use of evidence-based learning techniques. Test based learning generates what is commonly referred to as a test effect, which proved to strengthen the relationship between learning and memory, as well as being applicable to various test formats. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether test based learning, in terms of learning english words leads to increased performance in a reading comprehension test, more specifically a cloze test. The study was based on a within-group design and was conducted three times over four weeks.

De kommunala bostadsfastighetsaktiebolagen har haft en fördel jämtemot de privata bostadsfastighetsbolagen när det kommer till risker och konkurrens där stora skillnader har varit tillgången samt kostnaderna för finansiering. För att verka för en mer konkurrensneutral marknad genomfördes en omreglering som implementerades genom en ny lag 2011. Lagen 2010:879 om kommunala bostadsaktiebolag åsidosatte det tidigare förbudet mot vinstdrivande verksamhet och inverkade konkurrensneutraliserande vad gäller bland annat de kommunala bolagens möjligheter till förmånlig finansiering. Utifrån förändringarna antas följande problemformulering:Har omregleringen 2011, genom lagen 2010:879 om allmännyttiga kommunala bostadsaktiebolag, lett till en förändring av de kommunala bolagens kapitalstruktur?Givet problemformuleringen kommer studien att undersöka två teorier som utvecklats genom Modigliani-Miller, vilka är trade-off teorin samt pecking order teorin.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the regulatory power, efficiency and impact of export control on Swedish arms export from the 1980s onwards, linked to the delegation of authority of permit license to the Inspectorate of Strategic Products in 1997. An increase in the administrative sector, based on a collective decision making process and established criteria and guidelines, aimed to strengthen the control of arms export to non-democratic and problematic states. In short, the aim of the study is to investigate and analyze whether there was a decrease in the arms export to problematic states or not. On one hand, it is reasonable to assume that the introduction of the new regulation entailed a more strict arms export policy. However, previous research has showed that regulations are sometimes not effective since incentives to breach these may be present.The study begins by examining the Swedish case and situation in terms of arms manufacturing and export, as well as the delegation of authority and legislation applied to the field over time.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how salesperson control can be exercised in a retail store environment. A case study has been performed on a Swedish fashion company emphasizing the relationship between the company?s upper level management and their retail store operations in order to describe, analyze and classify the prevailing management control mechanisms. The paper presents an agency theoretical approach to the relationship applying behavior- and outcome based control theory, performance measurement theory and incentives theory in order to give a comprehensive image of the control system. The main finding is that the company?s management control system as applied to the sales force in its retail stores can be categorized as mainly behavior-based despite several explicit outcome-based features..

Uppsatsen behandlar ämnet turism och rättvis handel ur en geografisk synvinkel. Utgångspunkten är den ideella organisationen Tourism Concerns kriterier för en rättvis turism, som poängterar researrangörernas uppfostrande roll i marknadsföringen. Enligt detta NGO-perspektiv borde researrangören tillgodose resenären med information som möjliggör ett medvetet val, uppmuntrar resenären till ett mer ansvarsfullt och rättvist beteende väl på destinationen samt en rättvis beskrivning av destinationer i marknadsföringen. De menar att en påläst turist bidrar till ett mer rättvist förhållande mellan turist och lokalbefolkning. Fair Trade ? rättvis handel inom turism behandlas i uppsatsen dels som ett medel för en mer rättvis regionalgeografisk beskrivning av platser, dels som en väg till regional utveckling.Uppsatsen syfte är att beskriva och analysera de tre största svenska researrangörerna, Apollo, Fritidsresor och Vingresor, information till resenären gällande ansvarsfullt och rättvist resande, dels genom konkreta råd till resenären, dels i marknadsföringen av destinationer i utvecklingsländer.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate 7 different search strategies for content-based image retrieval with respect to retrieval effectiveness. The strategies are based on different levels of resolution implemented by the Haar transformation. The result of the study shows an improvement in both mean average precision and mean recall in strategies based on lower levels of resolution..

Today, many discussions are taking place through different platforms concerning the huge problem of ill health within modern society. Ill health tends to affect both children and adults. For the adult sector ill health may lead to doctor?s notification of illness in the short term and on the long term permanent disability benefit. In the mass media there are often articles published that point out the rising number of people with sick pay and people being given permanent disability benefit.

Background: Companies and organizations of today spend large amounts of money on IT-based business solutions. Such business solutions normally include business- consulting and software-creation (IT-related services). Due to the rapid development of the technology within this field of business the IT-customers find it difficult to select among potential suppliers on objective grounds.Purpose: To increase the understanding for the professionl approach of the people involved in the sales- and purchase process of IT-related services in a business-to-business context. The study is taking the buyers'as well as the sellers'perspective into account when analyzing the process. Method: The empirical findings were collected from eight companies in Linköping and Stockholm.