Innovation is considered one of the most important drivers for economic growth but measuring innovation is complex and abstract. To measure innovation, it is common to use proxies such as patent and R&D expenditure. How good of a measure is patents when it comes to explaining economic growth? Patents have faced a lot of critique when being used as a proxy for innovation, quality adjustment for

This thesis examines whether gold is still attractive to be invested as one of the portfolio component after the financial crisis in 2008. Besides, the study suggests the appropriate weight of gold in the portfolio investment during the normal and crisis periods. This paper uses the U.S. stock, bond, and gold data from 1997 until 2013 to investigate optimal weights by constructing the optimal port

Konsumenters diskussioner kring produkter och tjänster, s.k. word of mouth, har fått alltmer betydelse i takt med framväxten av Internet och sociala medier. Dessa digitala verktyg har möjliggjort en större spridning av konsumenters åsikter och diskussioner, vilket kan påverka ett företags varumärke både negativt och positivt. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur word of mouth skapas kring Consumer discussions regarding products and services, so called word of mouth, has received increasing importance with the emergence of the Internet and social media. These digital tools have enabled a greater distribution of consumers' opinions and discussions, which can affect a company's brand both negatively and positively. The purpose of this study is to investigate how word of mouth

Author: Choban, Azal and Roos, Marie-Christine Title: ”Att skaffa barn som psykisk sjuk är det mest själviska man kan göra.”- en kvalitativ undersökning av att växa upp med psykisk sjuka föräldrar Supervisor: Arne Kristiansen Assessor: Anders Östnäs The aim of our essay was to study how children of parents with mental illness grow up and how this affects them in later life. We also wanted to see

Vietnam has undergone unprecedented changes in its recent history, and has become increasingly exposed to global processes due to its deepened integration into the international economy and the large scale investment by the international community in its development process. Remarkable progress has been made over the past twenty five years, however new challenges have emerged and the solutions to

Reading and literacy in relation to technology development and a changing media landscape is an area of current interest, not least because several studies show that Swedish children´s reading abilities are decreasing. The aim of our study is to gain a deeper insight into how a new technical tool can be used and comprehended in a reading promotion activity in a library context. In order to do this

The purpose of the study is to investigate the growing trend in consumers to go back to basic lifestyle and to reveal how different events, meanings, experiences and ideas have a role to play in this change in consumers’ attitude. The paper aims to understand this new rising trend and consumer interest and provide a theoretical explanation of the phenomenon. The study focuses on barefoot / minimal

Banks are normally heavily indebted with equity levels of 5-10 percent of total assets or even lower. The assets consist mainly of short-term and long-term loans, funded by deposits which can be withdrawn at short notice. In order to avoid excessive withdrawals, which is called a bank run, deposit insurance systems, guaranteed by the state, are generally in operation. The financial sector is chara

This thesis is a result of an initial interest in multiculturalism – how states to deal with cultural plurality and the role of the concept of culture in this process – which led to a particular interest in the use of “culture” as a defence plea in courts; what is referred to as a “cultural defence”. With reference to two empirical cases it explores the legal, political and anthropological discuss

Recent years have seen many changes to the library field, not least when it comes to acquisitions. Internationally, the concept of letting library users take part in the acquisition process has developed over the past 30 years, from looking at inter-library loan applications as purchase requests to systems such as Patron-Driven Acquisitions (PDA). In a Swedish context, user influence has long been

Titel: Konkurrensen från lågpriskedjorna Seminariedatum: 2013-06-04 Kurs: NEKH01 Nationalekonomi: Examensarbete kandidatnivå 15hp Författare: Mia Quarfood Handledare: Joakim Gullstrand Nyckelord: Lågpriskedjor, svenska livsmedelsmarknaden, ICA, priskrig Syfte: Att undersöka huruvida lågpriskedjor sätter press på ICA-butiker att sänka sina priser. Teoretiskt ramverk: Teorier kring anpassande

Since January 2013 a new archival description system applies to all government agencies in Sweden. The system, developed by the Swedish National Archives, is based on the actual records and the organizational processes from which they originate and has been implemented since the guidelines RA-FS 2008:4 came into effect in 2009. In order to better understand the process oriented archival descripti

Uppsatsen behandlar det lojalistiska konfliktmönstret under den nordirländska interna konflikten 1969-1998 genom att undersöka hur och diskutera varför det lojalistiska konflikmönstret avviker från det samtida republikanska konfliktmönstret. Uppsatsen gör detta med utgångspunkt i en längre redogörelse för den historiska bakgrunden till konflikten 1969-1998, en genomgång av konflikten och den param

Akademiska studier är ett sätt för att höja sin kunskapsnivå inom ett visst område. Kunskapen tillgodogörs genom kurser på landets högskolor och universitet som är uppbygga med hjälp av en mängd varierande upplägg och examinationsformer. Dessa olika studiekontexter passar olika personlighetstyper olika bra och är relaterat till deras förmågor till engagemang. Personlighetsspektrumet introvert-extr

Shareholder agreements are frequently used between shareholders to regulate exertion and ownership structure. Transfer obligations in the form of preferential- and consent clauses are usually used to provide for these purposes. In contributing with news value and relevance to the practical legal society, the delimitation of this work has been set to s.c. “kupongbolag”, which constitute 95 % of the

Detta examensarbete bygger på en översättning av nio texter ur en Greenpeace-kampanj som handlar om hållbart fiske. Texterna är publicerade på Greenpeace internationella webbplats och ska översättas för att kunna publiceras på Greenpeace svenska webbplats. Arbetet inleds med en analys av källtexten som baseras på de metoder för textanalys som Hellspong och Ledins presenterar i sin bok Vägar genom

This essay studies the role of Mary, Jesus' mother, among women in Nicaragua. The aim is to investigate how Mary is present in the Nicaraguan feast la Purísima and how that relates to Mary in everyday life. Doing so, the research intends to contribute to the research about Mary in the Latin American context. Originally, the celebration of the feast started in the Eastern Church in the 7th cent

This thesis offers a study on the performance of the short-term/long-term model by Schwartz and Smith (2000) in the copper futures market for the period 1993-07-21 to 2013-03-05. The model's performance is evaluated in terms of its ability to model the term structure of copper futures prices, and is for this purpose compared to two one-factor benchmark models, an Orstein-Uhlenbeck process and

Purpose: This thesis seeks to increase knowledge of the possibilities and difficulties that appears when sustainability communication is performed on the social network site Facebook. Methodology: By qualitative research we executed interviews with IKEA employees and performed text analyses on their current sustainability communication online. Conclusion: Our findings suggests that being a comp

The aim of this study was to elucidate and analyse the debate on surrogate motherhood that has been held in Sweden for the last ten years (2003-2013) and furthermore to see how and to what extent the arguments that were used in the debate, also were found on a national policy level. The method that was used for this was discourse analysis. The empirical data were based on debate articles and edito