Sammanfattning Titel: CSR-prestations påverkan på tillgång till kapital Nivå: Examensarbete på Grundnivå (kandidatexamen) i ämnet företagsekonomi Författare: Erika Sörell och Johanna Svarfvar Handledare: Jan Svanberg Datum: 2020 – juni  Syfte: Företags sociala ansvarstagande (CSR) blir en allt viktigare fråga i samhället och olika intressenter ställer högre krav på företagen. Det finns olika åsikter om CSR-aktiviteter är en onödig kostnad för företag. Att ha tillgång till kapital är dock av stort värde för alla sorters företag och påverkas av huruvida företag upplever kapitalbegränsningar eller inte, vilket kan mätas på olika sätt. Syftet med den här studien är att undersöka om CSR-prestationer kan påverka företags tillgång till kapital, med avseende på kapitalbegränsningar inom EU. Metod: Studien utgår från en positivistisk forskningsfilosofi med en hypotetisk-deduktiv ansats. Studien har en kvantitativ design med sekundärdata inhämtad från databasen Thomson Reuters Eikon. Urvalet består av 272 publika bolag inom EU med data för åren 2010–2019. Data har analyserats genom multipla regressionsanalyser i statistikprogrammet SPSS. Resultat och Slutsats: Resultatet påvisar inga tydliga samband mellan CSR-prestationer och de tre undersökta måtten på kapitalbegränsningar: KZ-index, WW-index och SA-index. Gemensamt för dessa är dock att sambanden är svaga. Det finns därmed inga bevis för att bra CSR-prestation skulle ha en positiv påverkan på företags tillgång till kapital, utan kapitalbegränsningar verkar yttra sig olika i olika företag och är därför svårt att mäta.  Examensarbetets bidrag: Studien bidrar till att utöka forskningen kring CSR-prestation och tillgång till kapital, och signalerar att kapitalbegränsningar är ett komplext mått och att det finns brister i hur kapitalbegränsningar mäts. Studien ger också ett praktiskt bidrag i form av stöd för företag i att engagera sig i CSR eftersom det kan ge positiva effekter för företaget.  Förslag till framtida forskning: Ett förslag till framtida forskning är att utöka studien till att omfatta andra delar av världen men också att undersöka andra mått på CSR-prestation, eller att dela upp ESG-måttet och studera de olika dimensionerna var för sig.  Nyckelord: CSR, ESG, tillgång till kapital, kapitalbegränsningar, KZ-index, WW-index, SA-index / Abstract Title: CSR performance affect on access to capital Level: Student thesis, final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration  Author: Erika Sörell and Johanna Svarfvar Supervisor: Jan Svanberg Date: 2020 – June  Aim: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming an increasingly important issue in the society and various stakeholders place higher demands on companies. There are different opinions about whether CSR activities are an unnecessary expense. Having access to capital is of great value to all kinds of companies and is affected of whether or not the company experiences capital constraints, which can be measured in different ways. The aim of this thesis is to investigate if CSR performance can affect companies’ access to capital, with regard to capital constraints within the EU. Method: The study applies a positivistic research philosophy with a hypothetical-deductible approach. The study has a quantitative research design with secondary data retrieved from the database Thomson Reuters Eikon. The sample consists of 272 public companies within the EU with data for the years 2010–2019. Data has been analyzed in the SPSS statistics program. Result och Conclusion: The results show no obvious relationship between CSR performance and the three measures of capital constraints examined: KZ-index, WW-index and SA-index. A shared characteristic is that the relationship is weak. There is thus no evidence that a good CSR performance would have a positive impact on companies’ access to capital. Capital constraints appear different in all companies and are therefore difficult to measure. Contribution of the thesis: The study contributes to expanding the research on CSR performance and access to capital, and signals that capital constraints are a complex measure and that there are shortcomings in how they are measured. The study also makes a practical contribution in form of support for companies in engaging in CSR as it can have positive effects. Suggestion for future research: One suggestion for future research is to extend the study to other parts of the world but also to study other ways of measuring CSR performance, or to split the examined ESG Score and study the different dimensions of CSR separately. Keywords: CSR, ESG, access to capital, capital constraints, KZ-index, WW-index, SA-index

Many applications require storage and indexing of new kinds of data in main-memory, e.g. color histograms, textures, shape features, gene sequences, sensor readings, or financial time series. Even though, many domain index structures were developed, very a few of them are implemented in any database management system (DBMS), usually only B-trees and hash indexes. A major reason is that the manual effort to include a new index implementation in a regular DBMS is very costly and time-consuming because it requires integration with all components of the DBMS kernel. To alleviate this, there are some extensible indexing frameworks. However, they all require re-engineering the index implementations, which is a problem when the index has third-party ownership, when only binary code is available, or simply when the index implementation is complex to re-engineer. Therefore, the DBMS should allow including new index implementations without code changes and performance degradation. Furthermore, for high performance the query processor needs knowledge of how to process queries to utilize plugged-in index. Moreover, it is important that all functionalities of a plugged-in index implementation are correct. The extensible main memory database system (MMDB) Mexima (Main-memory External Index Manager) addresses these challenges. It enables transparent plugging in main-memory index implementations without code changes. Index specific rewrite rules transform complex queries to utilize the indexes. Automatic test procedures validate the correctness of them based on user provided index meta-data. Moreover, the same optimization framework can also optimize complex queries sent to a back-end DBMS by exposing hidden indexes for its query optimizer. Altogether, Mexima is a complete and extensible platform for transparently index integration, utilization, and evaluation.

by Ng Siu Kow Stephen, Wong Sai Fuk Victor. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1987. / Bibliography: leaves 41-42.

by Wong Charlmane. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Bibliography: leaves 59-60.

by Fan Wenning. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 41). / Abstract --- p.1 / Acknowledgement --- p.2 / Chapter / Chapter I. --- Introduction --- p.4 / Chapter II. --- HSI Futures and Trading Pattern --- p.8 / Chapter III. --- Spread Trading --- p.24 / Chapter IV. --- Relationship between Change in Price and and Change in Market Indicators --- p.27 / Chapter V. --- Trading Based on Market Indicators --- p.30 / Chapter VI. --- Hedge Effectiveness --- p.39 / Bibliography --- p.41

by Chan Shuen-Yiu & Tse Wai-Chung Steven. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1987. / Bibliography: leaves 91-92.

by Yung Pui Yin Ellen. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1987. / Bibliography: leaf 52.

This thesis is concerned with quasigroups with a small number of associative triples. The minimum number of associative triples among quasigroups of orders up to seven has already been determined. The goal of this thesis is to determine the minimum for orders eight and nine. This thesis reports that the minimum number of associative triples among quasigroups of order eight is sixteen and among quasigroups of order nine is nine. The latter finding is rather significant and we present a construction of an infinite series of quasigroups with the number of associative triples equal to their order. Findings of this thesis have been a result of a computer search which used improved algorithm presented in this thesis. The first part of the thesis is devoted to the theory that shows how to reduce the search space. The second part deals with the development of the algorithm and the last part analyzes the findings and shows a comparison of the new algorithm to the previous work. It shows that new search program is up to four orders of magnitude faster than the one used to determine the minimum number of associative triples among quasigroups of order seven.

All practical text search systems use inverted indexes to quickly resolve user queries. Offline index construction algorithms, where queries are not accepted during construction, have been the subject of much prior research. As a result, current techniques can invert virtually unlimited amounts of text in limited main memory, making efficient use of both time and disk space. However, these algorithms assume that the collection does not change during the use of the index. This thesis examines the task of index maintenance, the problem of adapting an inverted index to reflect changes in the collection it describes. Existing approaches to index maintenance are discussed, including proposed optimisations. We present analysis and empirical evidence suggesting that existing maintenance algorithms either scale poorly to large collections, or significantly degrade query resolution speed. In addition, we propose a new strategy for index maintenance that trades a strictly controlled amount of querying efficiency for greatly increased maintenance speed and scalability. Analysis and empirical results are presented that show that this new algorithm is a useful trade-off between indexing and querying efficiency. In scenarios described in Chapter 7, the use of the new maintenance algorithm reduces the time required to construct an index to under one sixth of the time taken by algorithms that maintain contiguous inverted lists. In addition to work on index maintenance, we present a new technique for accumulator pruning during ranked query evaluation, as well as providing evidence that existing approaches are unsatisfactory for collections of large size. Accumulator pruning is a key problem in both querying efficiency and overall text search system efficiency. Existing approaches either fail to bound the memory footprint required for query evaluation, or suffer loss of retrieval accuracy. In contrast, the new pruning algorithm can be used to limit the memory footprint of ranked query evaluation, and in our experiments gives retrieval accuracy not worse than previous alternatives. The results presented in this thesis are validated with robust experiments, which utilise collections of significant size, containing real data, and tested using appropriate numbers of real queries. The techniques presented in this thesis allow information retrieval applications to efficiently index and search changing collections, a task that has been historically problematic.

The kidneys and the eyes are sensitive to blood pressure changes. The kidney participates in blood pressure control and renal disease can cause arterial hypertension and be aggravated by hypertension, entering a vicious circle between both alterations. In human patients with hypertension, increased vascular resistance is observed in renal and ocular arteries. This increased vascular resistance can be measured with Doppler ultrasound by calculating resistive and pulsatility indices. Increased renal and ocular indices have been observed in human patients with hypertension, and a correlation between the indices and the systolic blood pressure and hypertensive damage has also been reported. The indices values in normal animals vary slightly among the studies and the technique, the operator and, the administration of sedative or anaesthetic drugs can cause variation of the indices. Then, obtaining your own reference values is necessary. The aim of this study is to determine if increased vascular resistance is found in dogs and cats with diseases that can cause hypertension and whether they are related with arterial blood pressure. Values were obtained in non-sedated healthy animals and the effect of a sedative protocol appropriated to be used in ill animals, if necessary, was evaluated. Then renal and ocular resistive and pulsatility indices and systolic blood pressure were obtained in dogs and cats with diseases that can cause hypertension, such as renal disease, diabetes mellitus, hyperadrenocorticism, and hepatic disease. Significant increased renal indices were found in the disease groups in comparison to healthy animals. Correlations with blood parameters and the indices were also found in different diseases. Correlation with blood pressure was not found in any of the groups. In conclusion, increased peripheral vascular resistance was found in the kidney in animals with these diseases, as well as certain degree of relationship with the severity of the disease (evaluated by means of blood parameters). However, no correlation with systolic blood pressure was observed.