Abstract Background Oil and gas is a main source of revenue for many countries. Norway is one of them. Several companies operate in these countries. The companies demand accounting to communicate to their stakeholders. The two biggest accounting regimes, IASB and USA have their own standards for the upstream activities of those companies. The standard setting bodies mandatorily require companies to comply. Norwegian listed companies, as they are in the IASB regime, must comply with the IASB standard, IFRS 6. Problem  The IASB standard has a problem of addressing the entire upstream activities of the companies Moreover, the standard has conceptual flaw. However, these oil and gas firms are required to follow it. As a remedy, the entities fill the gap by using the US GAAP, if they are listed, as the regulation requires them to follow IFRS. Thus, using these two standards coupled with the defect of the IASB standard is affecting them. Purpose The purpose of this thesis is to explain the effects of IFRS 6 on companies by comparing it with the US GAAP standard. In doing so, theories relevant to the issue are described and the technical gaps between the two standards are elaborated. Method  This thesis uses mixed method. The research design followed is concurrently mixing quantitative and qualitative methods. However, qualitative method dominates in the mixing. As a data collection mechanism, interview, questionnaire and documentation i.e. the annual reports of the companies are used. In the study both deductive and inductive reasoning are used. Conclusion Subsequent to making the study, the author concludes that the surveyed companies have used the US GAAP to fill the gap that IFRS possess. However, retaining two sets of accounts has economic effect and the companies are paying for that. Moreover, they expend costs for adopting the IFRS when they change their standard from US GAAP to IFRS. Moreover, it is difficult to make conclusion about diffusion of accounting method due to contagion effect. Similarly, although previous studies show that size of a firm is a determinant factor, it is tricky to make conclusion on the studied companies.

This paper contains two parts. First, we study the decoy effect (especially for the compromise decoy effect) by the experiments where the subjects face the trade-off of inflation and unemployment. As earlier studies show that the compromise decoy is not good as dominated decoy, we try to explore factors of determining compromise effect. Second, we investigate the factors affecting the subjects¡¦ preference over unemployment and inflation. In Part 1, we explore how to enhance the compromise decoy effect by changing the relative location among target, compromise, and decoy. It emerges that the distance between target and decoy, the distance between target and competitor, and the existence of the dominated decoy all affect the size of the compromise decoy effect. In Part 2, we explore the relation of subjects¡¦ preference over inflation and unemployment and their personal characteristics, such as location of hometown, the attitude toward risk, political participation, ideology, household income, knowledge of related terminology, whether to take related course or not, and friends¡¦ and relatives¡¦ unemployment status, and so on. Though the direction of effects is in line with our conjecture, the level of significance is not high enough.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the changes in the inadequate labor force sector of Taiwan before and after the coming Knowledge-Based Economic Time, which is considered as important to this study. The inadequate labor force sector mentioned above consists of inadequate working hours, low paid and mismatches between educational attainment and occupation. The raw data been used was from Manpower Surveys and Manpower Utilization Surveys Taiwan area, Republic of China by Census Bureau in both year 1991 and 2003. The study reveals the following findings. 1.In the inadequate working hours portion Workers who are male, age 35 to 44, married or cohabited, highest educational attainment is primary school or below, private-sector employed, working in north area of Taiwan and taking the roles as agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry & fishing and craft & related trades workers are significantly easier to fall into the inadequate working hours sector. 2. In the low paid portion Workers who are male, married or cohabited, highest educational attainment is primary school or below, own-account workers, workplace is located in middle area of Taiwan, agricultural, animal husbandry, forestry & fishing workers are significantly easier to fall into the low paid sector. 3. In the portion of mismatches between educational attainment and occupation Workers who are male, age 25 to 34, married or cohabited, highest educational attainment is senior high school & vocational school or above, private-sector employed and working in north area of Taiwan are significantly easier to fall into this sector. Especially, workers who take the roles as prod., machine operators and related workers, plant & machine operators & assemblers , and manufacturing share a large proportion. According to the conclusions above, this study provides typical suggestions for government polices toward utilization of labor force. The given comments will be helpful to the relative researchers in the further.

Waiting for service was often happen in Service setting. The literatures about the consequence of the waiting were strong in certain respects, typically negative and erode the customers¡¦ overall service evaluation, and underdeveloped in other respects. In this article, I consider the influence of the waiting on the customers perceived values. I propose the effect of waiting experiences on the customers perceived values depends on both how far the time lags of distances between purchasing and consuming and the word-of ¡Vmouth information supply. For the purpose, I choose the oversea leisure travel products that appear to have a significant time lag of consuming. The sample data from 290 college and graduated students were analyzed using descriptive statistics, T-tests, One-Way ANOVA and Two-Way MANOVA. The results of the three studies are presented as follows: 1. When customers perceived higher the value of the service products, they were more patient about waiting duration and more purchasing intentions. 2. The time lags of distances between purchasing and consuming were longer, the customers perceived values would increase first and then drop late. 3. Word of mouth information supply will enhance the customers perceived value.

In this study, it is aimed to relate architecture with the changing definitions of territory. In this context, the research will focus on the issue of in-between, where the boundaries between public and private domains are blurred in the modern world. The Dutch Embassy in Berlin designed by OMA / Rem Koolhaas is built upon a creative redefinition of blurring boundaries between &amp / #8216 / public&amp / #8217 / and &amp / #8216 / private&amp / #8217 / . Given the fact that the Embassy is a diplomatic structure for which the safety factor is one of the most important design criteria, how Koolhaas interprets the idea of openness, of transparency, modernity which are meant to symbolize the Netherlands, will be studied in this research.

Universities have a significant role in society as they are generators of economic activity, as land developers, as neighbors and as property owners. Therefore it is a focal point in the community. Every university lives within a surrounding community. They have been creating their own relations with the neighborhoods. The space that the university confronts with the city is shaped according to the needs of the people from the university and the inhabitants of the area. Between the university and the city, every university creates their own interface in accordance with the location and the inhabitants of the area. While planning the city or the university the interface zone did not take into account. It has been behaved as a part of the city although it has been a neighbor with university. While designing the university there has been no attempt to design this zone or making decisions including this zone. Therefore this space creates its own character in time. As it is locating between the city and the university it has been carrying both the character of the university and the city. The main aim of this study is to examine the spatial formation of the interface of university and city in respect to the planning decisions and spatial features of the area by investigating the two different types of universities in their own contexts in Ankara / Ankara University and METU. In this context, the spatial character of interface area is defined by examining this space as a transitional area, boundary and threshold. Then universities and their historical developments are examined in urban space and the relations between these two domains are investigated through the selected universities in Europe and USA. Finally, the situation of the university in Turkey is handled and searched the formation of the interface areas around the campuses of the two selected universities in Ankara.

A Study on the Development and the Analysis of Competitive Advantages of Semiconductor Industries across Taiwan Straits Abstract Semiconductor Industry, as frequently referred to as ¡§sangyo no kome¡¨ or ¡§the rice of industries¡¨, plays a critical role in providing most value-added components to all sorts of digital electronic products, and thus, is also the ideal and priority industry to many countries. Taiwan has achieved an important position in the wave of disintegration in global semiconductor industry after its development for tens of years. And it will continue to be substantial to Taiwan¡¦s economic growth and nation¡¦s competitiveness in the foreseeable future. Lately, two noteworthy incidents brought about our attention to the issue of their impacts on the pace of continuous evolution of Taiwan¡¦s semiconductor industry; the former being the WTO accession of both Taiwan and China, and the latter China¡¦s endeavor fostering its semiconductor industry. This paper first studies the characteristics and status quo of global semiconductor industry, as well as that in Taiwan and China. It then explores the impact of WTO accession and three related international agreements on the semiconductor industries on both shores of Taiwan Straits. This study continues to analyze the difference in the intensity of industry competitiveness between Taiwan¡¦s semiconductor industry and that of China, making use of five kinds of analysis models. The author found that the combinational use of Value-Chain Analysis and Diamond Analysis (plus the concept of Clusters) is most suitable and complete for this purpose; the former can be used to judge the relative competitiveness between two industries (with properly defined indices), and the later can be complementarily used to understand the sources of competitiveness, and competitive position, of an industry at certain location. This article also predicts the changes in terms of industry competitiveness, and the scenario of connections and interaction, between Taiwan¡¦s semiconductor industry and that of China in the 5-year future. Within every analysis attempt, suggestions are also made as references to authorities and industry leaders for policy making and strategy formulation.

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<p>Departing from the statement of the Swedish member of the European Parliament Eva-Britt Svensson that the EU could threat the Swedish development in gender politics this essay aims to investigate if this is possible and probable. In order to acquire a view of the actual differences between European and Swedish gender politics in the domain of family- and employment policies and how they affect one another I have conducted interviews with Swedish members of the European Parliament, civil servants and a lobbyist. By subjecting the answers to critical feminist theory the essay tries to explain the difference in the view of women and gender between the EU and Sweden and what it implicates.</p><p>It seems that the basic ambition of equality between women and men is to be found at both the European level and at Swedish level. But the view of the family and the role of the women as responsible for care work differ. Swedish gender politics don’t seem to have been affected in any negative way by EU rulings so far. The risk of Sweden to compare itself with other European countries could, however, lead to stagnation in the struggle for equality between women and men as an effect of Sweden considering itself to be far ahead.</p>

<p>This study was carried out in Ronneby municipality during May 2006. I chose to compare three senior schools with regards to the implementation of objective orientated directives based on the teachers understanding of the task, motivation, resources allocated and their significance for the disparity between boys’ and girls’ grades.</p><p>I carried out nine in-depth interviews: three at each senior school. From the interviews it emerged that teachers perceive objectives differently from parents and students. Teachers claim that they understand the directives but say that they lack the resources. According to those interviewed, the disparity in grades between boys and girls is due to biological factors, class affiliation and group dynamics. None of those interviewed feel that they contribute to the difference in grades.</p><p>This study should not be seen as a generalisation but rather as a preliminary study to further research within the topic area.</p>