Making accurate predictions of Private consumption expenditures is a difficult task. This thesis examines if consumer confidence can be used to forecast consumption. Using regression analysis, the link between consumer confidence and Private consumption expenditures is analyzed for Sweden between the years 1994 and 2005. Two different models are estimated. In the first model consumption is regressed only on consumer confidence, while model two is extended to contain more variables.

AbstractSince the 2006 election the country of Sweden is governed by four Liberal and Conservative parties. Parties that by cooperating maintain power in office and forms a so called coalition. A coalition that not only can be seen at the national but also at the local level. According to pervious research coalitions that holds control of the seats in the government at the national level tends to increase the total expenditures compared to other types of government formations. Can a similar connection be seen at the local level? This the fundamental issue of this essay.

The need of raw material does of course fluctuate but the long term view is an increasing demand due to the growing consumption of sawn timber products, pulp, paper and lately also biomass. This has led to a keener competition for wood. At the same time there is an ongoing structural change of a significant part in the Swedish wood supply market, the private forest owners. In 1992, 22 % of Sweden´s 335 000 private forest owner lived apart from their forest. In 2007 this figure had risen to 36 %.

This thesis seeks to explain the effect of private equity ownership on the amount of invest- ments made in a company. We use three capital expenditure based key ratios to determine if there is a tendency for private equity owned firms to invest more or less than comparable companies. Our dataset involve 27 Swedish buyout companies that were sold by a private equity fund between 2001 and 2009. Each buyout is assigned a peer group of two firms in similar size and in the same industry. Firstly, we compare the key ratios to determine potential differences in the level of investment.

Abstract: Private equity used to be synonymous with tremendous yields and rates of return. However, the private equity market trembled in 2008, due to the financial meltdown caused by the worldwide credit crisis. Considering the current low number of exits within the private equity industry, the purpose of this thesis is to examine if there has been any change in how private equity firms control their portfolio companies since the inception of the crisis. One private equity company and two portfolio companies have been studied. The case study is prepared from interviews with senior directors in the portfolio company and investment managers in the private equity firm.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how social procurement can be a further development of public-private partnership. This is done with interviews and a case study of the social procurement Mitt Gröna Kvarter and its labor effort Boendebyggarna. The theoretical framework used in the thesis consists of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility. It tries to answer the following questions:What does this social procurement mean by the concept of public-private partnership?What does this social procurement mean for the participants involved?How can social procurement be seen as a further development of public-private partnership?The thesis uses the theory development around the concepts of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility and shows that social procurement does indeed have similarities to public-private partnership and could very well be a further development of it..

Uppsatsen behandlar de investeringskriterier och värderingsmetoder som svenska Private Equity-företag använder inför företagsförvärv. Vi har gjort en kvalitativ analys av fem svenska Private Equity-aktörer. Våra slutsater är att de Private Equity-bolag vi studerat har ett fåtal övergripande investeringskriterier men att de är relativt flexibla gällande resterande. Företagen använder sig främst av multipelvärdering i värderingsprocessen. Sammanfattningsvis kan vi konstatera att Private Equity-företagen fokuserar mindre på vad företaget är värt och lägger allt fokus på hur mycket företaget kan avyttras för..

Private label introductions have been increasing in recent years. The main reason for this is that private labels increase the retailer's profits in the category. The purpose of this study is to examine how a private label introduction affects the category's performance. This study was conducted by studying the category's performance before and after the introduction, two categories are examined. Data have been collected at a Swedish retailer and consists of 38 stores, all located in Sweden and within the same store profile..

The consumption levels in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway have been rising fo r the last decade. Even after the financial crisis of 2008, consumption levels continued their upward trend, regardless of the recession. The explanation seems to be, at least partly, that households tends to increase their debt ratio in order to continue the same standard of living as before in terms of consumption. It is clear, based of our results, that there is a connection between increased consumption and debt ratio for households. And the consequences of allowing loans to finance a sustained or increasing consumption may ultimately be difficult to manage.

Private labels have been increasing a lot during the last 30 years. The reason is great margins and it also works as an aid to build a store's brand. The problem is that private labels take market shares from national brands. Retailers need to have a good mix between these products and adopting category management without being influenced by opportunism, which can lower the profitability of a category. The purpose of this study is to examine and describe how private labels are prioritized in the category edible fat.

In this paper we investigate 67 Swedish buyouts in the manufacturing and retailing sector between the years 2004-2012. The purpose is to measure changes in a set of financial key ratios to see if private equity firms are able to improve performance in their portfolio companies compared to a peer group consisting of other firms within the same industries. Furthermore, we examine if there is a difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors. The key results are that the private equity owned firms have not outperformed their peers with respect to the chosen key ratios. We also conclude that there is no significant difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors..

Several studies have investigated the relationship between different measures of innovative activity, such as patent statistics and R&D expenditures and some have looked deeper into the differences between large and small firms regarding number of patents issued per employee or per R&D dollar. In this paper, the objective is to find out if there are any indications of a barrier to entry (due to economical factors, lack of knowledge etc) for small firms to get into the field of patent handling. The approach is to first set up a hypothesis based on some simple assumptions about how firms would make decisions about whether to apply for a patent or not and thereafter use econometric methods in an empirical investigation. The data used for this study are figures on number of employees, number of patents granted and R&D expenditures for the Swedish firms in the pulp and paper industry. The main conclusion is that, based on the analysis of the data from this rather limited group of firms, no such barrier can be seen..

This study aims to build a deeper understanding on how shareholder value is created in Private Equity investments, especially during the holding period. The study is a qualitative study of the buyout of the access security company Bewator AB made by the Swedish Private Equity firm EQT in 2002. The buyout became highly successful due to various reasons. The study draws the conclusion, contrary to popular belief, that Private Equity firms create value through taking a long term view on business developing rather than being short term value destroyers. Incentive alignment is another important factor..

The presence of nostalgic emotions during consumption is often seen as something purely positive to a product. To evoke these emotions has become a very common tool in marketing and advertising. Paradoxically very few studies have focused on the effects of nostalgia. The purpose of the thesis has been to understand how the presence of nostalgic emotions during consumption effect consumers. The research model used is a quantitative study with testing of hypotheses generated from theory.

Swedish consumption habits led to a discourse on consumption needs of the general public during the first half of the 20th century, involving primarily several institutions, but also a variety of popular movement organizations, among which we find Kooperativa Förbundet. In this discourse, ascetic consumption and a rationalized outlook on consumption were idealized, as the Swedes needed to be economical not to live beyond their means. The objective of this study is to investigate the ideals this type of discourse conveys throughout the latter half of the 20th century. This will be achieved by investigating selected editions of the cookbook ?Vår Kokbok? published by Kooperativa Förbundet.