Harry Potter-serien har kommit att bli en väldigt populär serie både hos barn och vuxna över hela världen. I både böckernas originalform och de adapterade filmerna har människor förälskat sig i berättelserna om Harry Potter och hans magiska värld. Det har gjorts flertalet studier om Harry Potter, där olika perspektiv behandlas utefter böckerna och/eller filmerna. I denna studie är syftet att jämföra den tredje boken respektive filmen i serien, Harry Potter och fången från Azkaban (2001; 2004), för att se vilka likheter och skillnader som finns mellan boken och den adapterade filmen.Studien tar hjälp av två analysmetoder: narrativanalys och komparativ analys. Med hjälp av dessa analysmetoder har en resumé skrivits som behandlar både boken och filmen i sin helhet. Analysmetoderna har även använts till att redogöra för och jämföra bokens respektive filmens uppbyggnad och genre, men också tre av de viktigare karaktärerna i de olika medierna.Analysen visar att karaktärernas viktigare egenskaper inte påverkas i adaptionen, detsamma gäller för berättelsens handling och genre. Vissa händelser och egenskaper som finns med i boken finns inte med i den adapterade filmen, vilket kan förklaras av att filmskaparna var tvungna att göra flera val i produceringen av filmen för att behålla kärnan i berättelsen.Uppbyggnaden påverkas i adaptionen genom att de olika medierna för berättelsen vidare genom skilda sätt, men berättelsens kärna hålls intakt. I undervisningssyfte går det att dra slutsatsen att denna berättelse, både som bok och film, går att arbeta med i undervisningen i årskurs 1-3.

This work analyzes an interrelationship between stock indices S&P 500, FTSE 100, DAX, HSI, Nikkei, BSI and PX in a time period from September 2004 till March 2010. Such an interrelationship has already been examined and a dominating position of American indices has been found. This influence was stronger during a financial crisis. Because the examined time period covers both financial crisis and the period before, the work studies their interrelationship in the whole period and at the end in the time period before financial crisis. The influence of one stock index on the other can be cause by several factors: (i) dominance of influencing stock index, (ii) efficient market and (iii) financial crisis. As the reaction of stock index is evoked from new information, the intention of this work is to take into account nonsychronous trading of stocks exchanges. Therefore I explored those exchange stocks closing earlier than the others start in two ways by respecting the time lag and by non-respecting the time lag. The interrelationship between the indices was modeled with help of VAR models and proved by Granger causality test.

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of free information on the Internet on decreasing sales of printed newspapers. I tested the main hypothesis that the increase in Internet daily visits in the previous period has an impact on the sales of the printed journal in the following period . Another researched phenomenon was the influence of previous rising visitors of web news on subsequent revenue from advertising in print version. These effects I researched on -month and quarterly data in panel of eight czech dailies for the period from 2006 to 2012. The result is that we could not confirm the effect of Granger causality between web pages and his dailies itself nor on a monthly or quarterly basis. When it comes to examining the impact of Internet visits to newspapers revenue from advertising, on the contrary, here we confirmed Granger causality on quarterly data from past revenues from advertising to the current Internet visits . This means that the Internet visits will decrease when there is increased advertising income of newspapers in the previous quarter, which is , however, difficult to interpret in economic terms . The main benefit of this work is that the effect of preceding of webiste visits and newspaper circulations was not confirmed.

In the recent years, there has been growing talk of investing in commodities in the financial markets. In the past, the commodity markets served for purposes of the producers and the end-users of commodities. With gradual innovation of the financial markets in the 19th and 20th century the modern commodity markets evolved and became more standardized. This process was accompanied by the increasing interest of financial speculators. In contrast with the commercial participants, the goal of these new investors in the commodity markets is not to hedge against adverse changes in commodity prices but to profit on the price movements of commodities. The inflow of this group was intensified by the development of new financial instruments enabling these investors to enter the commodity markets. It is undisputable that speculators have positive effect on the markets, by providing liquidity and lowering transaction costs. What remains to be answered is the real effect which the speculators have on the commodity prices, and if their action does not create distortion in the commodity prices. The price development on the commodity markets during the recent financial crisis gives strong arguments in the hands of those accusing the speculators of the negative impact on the commodity prices, which sometimes lead to creation of price bubbles. The goal of this thesis will be the analysis of the effect of speculators on the commodity markets, and if this prejudice is justified.

This research addressed two main issues that have become evident in studies of interstate cooperation. The first issue has to do with the relationship between cooperation and conflict. Can they be represented on a single, uni-dimensional continuum, or are they better represented by two theoretically and empirically separable dimensions? Granger causality tests were able to clarify the nature of cooperative events. The second issue is related to factors that might facilitate or discourage cooperation with other countries as a foreign policy tool. Factors used to explain cooperation and conflict include domestic variables, which have not been fully accounted for in previous empirical analyses. It is hypothesized that economic variables, such as inflation rates, GDP, and manufacturing production indices affect the likelihood of cooperative event occurrences. The effect of political dynamics, such as electoral cycles, support rates and national capability status, can also affect the possibility of cooperative foreign policies. The domestic factors in panel data was tested with Feasible Generalized Least Square (FGLS) in order to take care of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelations in residuals. The individual case analysis used linear time series analysis.

The research aims to investigate the relationship between economic freedom, political freedom and economic growth. The Arab Spring placed renewed interest on the topic of freedom, yet current economic conditions seemingly contradicted the established theory. The largest free economies were being outperformed by those with less political and economic freedom.Three objectives were specified to answer the research question. The first objective aimed to determine the association between economic freedom, political freedom and economic growth, for which Spearman’s correlation was used. The second objective aimed to investigate causal relationships between the variables, for which Granger’s causality was employed. The third objective aimed to examine complex relationships between the variables, for which vector autoregression was used.Economic growth was weakly correlated with the independent variables. Civil liberties, political rights and economic freedom, however, had strong correlations with each other. Economic freedom and economic growth had bi-directional Granger-causality. Political rights Granger-caused economic freedom whilst civil liberties Granger-caused political rights and economic freedom. Using vector autoregression, the model consisting of economic growth, economic freedom and civil liberties had the greatest explanatory power towards economic growth. Existing theory therefore remains valid: political freedom enhances economic freedom, which, in turn, enhances economic growth.The relationship between economic freedom, political freedom and economic growth / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Soil moisture influences the water and energy cycles of terrestrial environments, and thus plays an important climatic role. However, the behavior of soil moisture at large scales, including its impact on atmospheric processes such as precipitation, is not well characterized. Satellite remote sensing allows for indirect observation of large-scale soil moisture, but validation of these data is complicated by the difference in scales between remote sensing footprints and direct ground-based measurements. To address this problem, a method, based on information theory (specifically, mutual information), was developed to determine the useful information content of satellite soil moisture records using precipitation observations. This method was applied to three soil moisture datasets derived from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) measurements over the contiguous U.S., allowing for spatial identification of the algorithm with the least inferred error. Ancillary measures of biomass and topography revealed a strong dependence between algorithm performance and confounding surface properties. Next, statistical causal identification methods (i.e. Granger causality) were used to examine the link between AMSR-E soil moisture and the occurrence of next day precipitation, accounting for long term variability and autocorrelation in precipitation. The probability of precipitation occurrence was modeled using a probit regression framework, and soil moisture was added to the model in order to test for statistical significance and sign. A contrasting pattern of positive feedback in the western U.S. and negative feedback in the east was found, implying a possible amplification of drought and flood conditions in the west and damping in the east. Finally, observations and simulations were used to demonstrate the pitfalls of determining causality between soil moisture and precipitation. It is shown that ignoring long term variability and precipitation autocorrelation can result in artificial positive correlation between soil moisture and precipitation, unless explicitly accounted for in the analysis. In total, this dissertation evaluates large-scale soil moisture measurements, outlines important factors that can cloud the determination of land surface-atmosphere hydrologic feedback, and examines the causal linkage between soil moisture and precipitation at large scales.

The nexus among foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and the Mexican economic growth has been the subject of a number of recent papers. Yet, previous studies frequently overlook its relationship to human capital and consequently ignore potential interlinkages between the variables. By running an ARDL model and thereafter applying the Granger causality technique derived by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) and Dolado and Lütkepohl (1996) this paper investigates the relationship among FDI and economic performance in Mexico during 1970-2018 after incorporating human capital into the framework. When including human capital, measured as gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education, FDI inflows and real GDP per capita have an insignificant long-run relationship. However, this paper finds a Granger-causal relationship running from FDI inflows to human capital. Human capital, on the other hand, precedes real GDP per capita and the main implication is thus that FDI may not spur economic performance directly, but indirectly through its significant effect on the enrolment ratio in tertiary education. Therefore, to ignore the influence of human capital may result in deceptive conclusions regarding the Mexican FDI-growth nexus.

With an ever-increasing globalising world, trade is of most importance for developing countries to not fall behind and be outcompeted. Export-led growth theory states that one of the key determinants for economic growth is exports. This thesis aims to analyse the causal effects of exports on economic growth in the case of Brazil. Annual data from the World Bank’s database for the years 1990-2018 has been used. The variables included are GDP, exports, gross capital formation, FDI and labour force. This study puts the export-led growth theory in a Vector Error Correction – Granger Causality framework. As opposed to previous scholars’ findings, neither export-led growth nor growth-led export could be determined for Brazil.

Real estate industry plays a significant role in high speed of economic development in China. However, with increasingly high housing price and scare land resources, real estate development is caught in a vicious circle. A large number of families could not afford their housing while housing prices have no trend to decrease which leads to huger gap between the rich and the poor and causes indirectly instability of society. Therefore, creating a healthy and stable real estate investment market is extremely urgent. The purpose of the thesis is to research the relationship between leading index of macro economy prosperity and real estate investment based on the reality. We found that leading indicator Granger causes real estate investment while real estate investment Granger causes leading indicator at the same time. Based on that, this paper also forecasts the real estate investment with VAR models in the following 7 years which was proved to a circle of real estate market. In the light of our research, some target suggestions are pointed out at last.