Fairtrade is a certification of products that has grown from the criticism of conventional trade. By increasing the focus on the producers? economic and social conditions, poverty can be fought and the producers? voice in the marketplace can be strengthened. Fairtrade City is a certification for municipalities who wish to engage in ethical consumption. The purpose of this thesis is to understand the Fairtrade City concept and how this can be a tool for working towards sustainable development. To be more concise, we want to answer the following questions: Why does Örebro municipality work with the Fairtrade City certification and how can Fairtrade City be used as tool for working towards sustainable development? The thesis is based on qualitative interviews and e-mail interviews with members of the steering committee for Örebro Fairtrade City and on literature studies. We have in our thesis identified Örebro Fairtrade City as a result of 1) that Örebro municipality through Fairtrade City wants to change their surrounding environment by engaging in ethical trade 2) that the surrounding environment effects Örebro municipality through isomorphism regarding its way to deal with sustainable development 3) that the municipality through its work with ethical trade becomes legitimized by their surrounding environment.

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.

This paper describes and develops a trade off model of optimal capital structure by Bradley et al. (1984). The model is then tested to examine how changes in corporate tax rates affect the optimal capital structure of firms. Based on theoretical implications of the model, four hypotheses are derived stating that firms? optimal debt-to-value ratio is (1) negatively related to financial distress costs, (2) negatively related to non-debt tax shields, (3) negatively related to firm volatility and (4) positively related to the corporate tax rate.

Syfte: Studiens syfte är att undersöka huruvida det går att prognostisera utveckling på OMXS30 med hjälp av lämpliga tekniska analysverktyg. Detta för att utreda hur relationen mellan den Effektiva Marknadshypotesen och Behavioural Finance ser ut på den svenska marknaden. Vidare är syftet även att undersöka möjligheten till att förbättra avkastningen med hjälp av tydliga restriktioner avseende money management. Detta undersöks för att klargöra om en högre avkastning kan erhållas med denna investeringsstrategi jämfört med passiva alternativt slumpmässiga investeringsstrategier. Metod: Tre tekniska analysindikatorer testas på svenska OMXS30 mellan åren 1987 och 2008.

Visby is a city that at first glance is of medieval origins. The popular image of scientists today is that the city was formed in the Middle Ages. According to some of the researchers Visby was formed during the Viking Age, it is based on the basis that the area has been used for a long period. Urban development in the Nordic countries is complex and there are different opinions as to why the Nordic cities emerge. It is important to shed light on the underlying process on why cities are emerging to provide clarity as to why Visby city is emerging.

This paper deals with the question of why companies choose to go on trade fairs and exhibition examines how the media works. The essay's main focus is on stand contractors and why those hired to produce other company stands. The study is based on three interviews, a visit to a trade fair and a questionnaire survey. Together with the relevant literature is given a clear picture of how companies are thinking in their choice of attending the fairs, but also why stand contractors are involved in the process. We concluded that some companies do not know why they participate in fairs and many feel compelled to contribute to not be forgotten in the market.

Export is a top priority for Sweden's economy but for Swedish companies it may involve uncomfortable risks of exporting without sincere consideration. When the United Nations Security Council puts an embargo against a country, this often mean an import and export restriction. The thought is to push undemocratic regimes into respecting human rights. When the embargo is in force, however, the parties are not able to fulfill their contractual obligations, which practically means that the agreement will be suspended. The problem is what happens when an embargo is in force for a longer period of time.

In Swedish school library research, the role of the school library has seldom been studied in a subject-specific context. When it has been, the subject has usually been a theoretical subject such as Swedish or Social studies. The purpose of this master's thesis is to study what role or roles the school library can play in a different context, in the program-specific subjects at a trade oriented program in the Swedish upper secondary school, and to determine what factors affect the possibility for the school library to play a role in such a context. The Food Programme was selected as the specific program to be studied. In this program, the students learn a trade, in this case bakery, and the teaching in the program-specific subjects can be expected to be practical in nature.

In recent years, employees at large companies have started to demand that their employer should work more for good causes. The money the company wants to donate to charity is distributed mostly through a vote to decide where the money will be remitted. The purpose of this design case is to develop a design concept for a web-based donation service that involves all employees at a company. Furthermore, the authors of this study intends to explore how the motivation for employees of a company can be affected by participation in this service. In this design case, the service function, quality and concept was tested and evaluated.

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.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how four Swedish retail companies describe their information management in connection to ethical trade. My purpose is also to examine how this information management relates to organizational learning. My questions at issue are ? ?Which activities related to information management in connection to ethical trade is described by the companies?? and ?How can these activities and statements be related to organizational learning?? My method of investigation is to perform qualitative interviews with representatives from the retail companies and relate the results to theories on information management and organizational learning, mainly theories of double-loop- and single-loop learning. The information management literature address issues such as information needs, information sources and information seeking.

The EU has for a long time had a special relationship with its former colonies in Africa Caribbean and the Pacific, called the ACP?countries. This relationship is about to change radically with the new partnership agreement signed in June 2000 in Cotonou. This essay aims to study the EU ?ACP Partnership Agreement from the perspectives of two different theories: The liberalist, free-trade policy theory and the nationalist/regionalist, protectionist theory.

Arms trade is a multi-faced issue, it can increase the state's economic revenue; however also endanger the human security. The European Union's member state United Kingdom is one of the five largest arms traders in the world. The EU promotes human security in its work, especially in the union's development policies. These circumstances address the main question of the study: is there a contradiction between the UK's arms trade and the EU development policies. The objective of this study is to research the stately weapon use in three of the UK's trading partners, and how it could affect the EU development policies.

The Vaxholm conflict was initiated when the Swedish Trade Union for Construction Workers shut down a construction site in order to prevent a Latvian construction company to build a school after the two parties had failed to agree upon a collective agreement in compliance with Swedish regulations. An emotional public debate followed that resulted in a discussion of the proposal for the Services Directive of the EU, based upon the country-of-origin principle. In this thesis we will analyze whether the country-of-origin principle or the country-of-destination principle is best suited to capture the gains-of-trade that the common market hoards and improve welfare within the EU. We conclude that the country-of-origin principle is the more apt of the two, though it leads to some short-run costs such as structural unemployment. But these will be more than outweighed by the gains in aggregate welfare for the EU in the long run..

This is a degree project performed at Halmstad University in Sweden on the subject carpet ofreinforcement. This project is developed in association with Celsa Steel Service in Halmstad.The purpose of this report is to investigate how much time that can be saved if carpet ofreinforcement is used instead of the traditional way to work with reinforcement and seewhat kind of parameters that is important between the choices. We are also going to seehow this product affects the situation for reinforcement workers from an ergonomic point ofview.Carpet of reinforcement is made by straight reinforcement?s bars that are welded togetherwith steel bands. These rolls are made at a factory with a machine that welds together thebars in determined centre distance, with desired dimensions after the constructionengineers? blueprints.