How capital structure influences corporate performance and value has been in the interest of researchers and scholars for more than half a century, but an answer is yet to be found. The main objective of the present paper is to contribute with data for this cause and hopefully help to clarify this mystery. The method that was used was by analyzing the impact of debt on profitability and market valuation through linear regression. The study examined 17 Swedish property companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Large Mid and Small Cap over a 6 year period (2007-2012). The authors found a slightly negative relationship between debt-to-equity and profitability measured by return on equity (ROE) as well as by return on assets (ROA).

Uppsatsen söker förståelse för det nystartade svenska jeansmärket Cheap Mondays snabba och stora framgångar med sitt koncept. Kvalitativa intervjuer med nyckelpersoner på företaget genomfördes. Denna empiri analyserades sedan utifrån modern marknadsföringsteori, till att börja med med hjälp av 4 P-modellen. Denna ledde sedan vidare till fördjupning inom word-of-mouth och varumärkesidentitet. Med hjälp av dessa teorier drogs intressanta slutsatser och vi pekar ut ett antal framgångsfaktorer som haft stor betydelse för märkets popularitet..

The aim of this study is to investigate ordinary readers' evaluation of quality in literature. The main issue is which criteria ordinary grown-up readers use when they are defining their likes and dislikes in literature. The analysis is based upon qualitative interviews with six readers, two men and four women, between 21 and 59 years of age. The study is hermeneutic. Since theoretical works concerning evaluation of literature among ordinary readers are sparse, the philosopher of arts and religion Hugo A.

This paper investigates the ongoing talks between the Swedish libraryassociation (Svensk Biblioteksförening) and the Swedish Publishers?Association (Svenska Förläggareföreningen) regarding a new payment modelfor e-book loans in Swedish public libraries. The current model allows an ebookto be lent an infinite number of times and for each loan the library paystwenty Swedish kronor to the supplier, Elib, which in turn passes half of thatsum on to the publicers.The reason for the talks is that both libraries and publishers have reason to bedispleased with the current model. For the libraries it has proven to be aneconomic challenge, for the already strained library economies, sincepayment is made directly by the individual library from the media budget.The publishers also have reasons to want a change of model since thecompensation they receive from the libraries is not enough for them tocontinue publishing e-books and making a profit. They argue that to protectthe commercial e-book market the principle of free loans has to be replacedby a model that introduces ?friction? in the form of limitations on how manytimes a title can be loaned.This study is based on interviews with representatives from both sidesinvolved in the talks, along with a representative from Elib and a librarian.An analytical tool has been constructed by the author to aid in the process ofuncovering arguments and standpoints in the interviews.

Every big scam starts with a small invite. You are about to face the inconvenient accusation of you being responsible for your own loss. At least, this was the case for the seller of ?Macbook Pro 15? 2.4 intel-core, 4GB, glossy? in early December 2010.This thesis is breaking apart the comfort zone of being a victim, suggesting we want to be betrayed. Although the ?victim? has detected a risk, his wish to beleive that the affair is what it?s told to be, nourishes the betrayal that can proceed.

This report is about the exam project; Blomgren- a collection ofpatterns. During eight weeks I have from the family Blomgren, whowas my grandfather?s family with siblings and parents, produced fivepatterns for textiles into interior and space. In addition to thefamily as an inspiration, I have taken into account of the collection?sname - as a word and the meaning of the word.

The aim of this study is to examine the collection One Thousand and One Nights (also: The Arabian Nights) from a european perspective, by comparing different european translations. The study focuses on three translations into Swedish from different periods of time and how the tales have changed in the translation process - depending on the prevailing line of approach and Western perceptions of Eastern standards. The thesis of the study is that Eastern culture, from a Western perspective, has been seen as exotic and different but not as a high literary culture and that this view has affected the translations into european languages. The study shows, among other things, that Western culture is many times considered normative in the translations and that the translators often give their own voices a prominent role, also that common Western notions of the East affects the translations.The word ?orientalism? is used frequently in the study and it refers primarily to the image of the Orient as it is described in Edward Saids' book Orientalism: as a Western construction whose main purpose is to strengthen its own conception of the Orient and thereby strengthen the Western identity as better than the Orient.

The aim of this study is to examine the collection One Thousand and One Nights (also: The Arabian Nights) from a european perspective, by comparing different european translations. The study focuses on three translations into Swedish from different periods of time and how the tales have changed in the translation process - depending on the prevailing line of approach and Western perceptions of Eastern standards. The thesis of the study is that Eastern culture, from a Western perspective, has been seen as exotic and different but not as a high literary culture and that this view has affected the translations into european languages. The study shows, among other things, that Western culture is many times considered normative in the translations and that the translators often give their own voices a prominent role, also that common Western notions of the East affects the translations.The word ?orientalism? is used frequently in the study and it refers primarily to the image of the Orient as it is described in Edward Saids' book Orientalism: as a Western construction whose main purpose is to strengthen its own conception of the Orient and thereby strengthen the Western identity as better than the Orient.

The title of this study came about from the title of Robert Putnams book Bowling Alone, where Putnam mentions that less people are bowling in teams than before. Bowling is still a large leisure activity in the USA but people tend to bowl more and more in small groups and less in organized teams. This study deals with social capital and leisure time. Its aim is to find out if some Swedish people create social capital on their leisure time and also how do they spend their leisure time. Robert Putnams book Bowling Alone serves as main background material along with the work by Bo Rothstein.

Sweden?s role during the Second World War has been a matter that has been under much debate since the war?s end in 1945. The debate has however ebbed and flowed and established a discourse that Sweden was forced to give in to German demands and did so to avoid conflict that would have severely damaged Sweden. However, in 1991 a Swedish journalist Maria-Pia Boëthius published a book known as Heder och Samvete in which she explained that the Swedish concessions to Germany during the war were made out of profit rather than giving in to German demands. This sparked a debate that ended with the establishment that Sweden compromised and even broke its neutrality in favor to gain profit from the war.

Art in the city can be invisible until we talk about it. Letting children see public art in the context of play and narrative is a way to enhance creative thinking and knowledge as well as making the art visible. By creating a prototype for an art walk for children this study was able to create a scenery of children using different kinds of mediated narrative combined with a physical environment and movement. The theoretical framework of the project was picture books (Rhedin, 1991) transmedia (Jenkins 2006, Ryan 2004) and public art (Kwon 2002). The project?s aim was to create an empirical context for primary school children to explore public artwork.

AbstractThe aim of this study is to investigate how a picture book for children is transformed into an easy-to-read version for children who have just started reading. I examine two versions of Emil of Lönneberga. One of the books is the orginal picture book of Emil in Lönneberga and was written by Astrid Lindgren (1963), while the other is an easy-toreadversion of the book, as adapted by the author Helena Renvall (1977). I have conducted a comparative study as a text and picture analysis of the material, with the focus on the adaptation of the original story. The adaptation in this case is a revision intended to make the story easier to read and more accessible to today?s children.

This thesis treats the topic of user-generated comments connected with news stories on news sites, meaning electronic word-of-mouth combined with PR. The writers have examined how different types of comments affect consumers' perception of the article and also what communication effects these comments generate in terms of attitudes, purchase intent and word-of-mouth intent. The results interesting to the news site owners, is that lots of comments and negative comments generate a negative effect by making the actual article less credible, attractive and worth reading (relative to the subsequent comments). On the positive side, serious comments imply that the news story is perceived as more interesting, than a news story followed by non-serious comments. From a brand equity perspective, the interesting results show that few comments compared to lots of comments, generate a better attitude to the brand, even though there is no difference in how positive or negative the comments are.

The background to this study is the government’s investment in design and the increase of design education around the country. As a future design teacher (industrialdesign) at high school/college, it is of great interest for me to look closer at student’s attitude towards design and design educations at high school.Questions that have been investigated are student´s attitude towards design; design as a concept but also as a phenomenon. How does the student counselor inform the students of the differentchoices before choosing high school?Does the students view on design correspond to what the student counselor say?What opinion does the student counselor have to the concept design as well as design in highschool? Is design just a craze or here to stay?To get answers I have made interviews with student counselors at two different schools, I have also been in contact with a student counselor on the internet. Their thoughts will clarify thesituation that the students might be in.

Aligning parallell terms in a parallell corpus can be done by aligning all words and phrases in the corpus and then performing term extraction on the aligned set of word pairs. Alternatively, term extraction in the source and target text can be made separately and then the resulting term candidates can be aligned, forming aligned parallell terms. This thesis describes an implementation of a word aligner that is applied on extracted term candidates in both the source and the target texts. The term aligner uses statistical measures, the tool Giza++ and heuristics in the search for alignments. The evaluation reveals that the best results are obtained when the term alignment relies heavily on the Giza++ tool and Levenshtein heuristic..