A study has been undertaken of the biblical prefaces of Mikael Agricola. All the prefaces are based on those of Luther and/or translations of the same in the Swedish Bible of 1541 (GVB). The New Testament prefaces, like GVB, keep closely to the originals. There are however visual differences — in punctuation, capital letter usage and paragraphing. The literal translation makes the material very suitable for a study of Agricola's use of capital letters and punctuation in comparison with the Lutheran Bible and GVB. The material is too limited for any conclusions to be drawn about the principles underlying paragraphing. Agricola, like Luther (from 1539 onwards) and GVB, sometimes uses capital initial letters in the substantive designations of God and Christ the Holy Spirit the Bible and its books the Church and its sections occupations nationalities Adjectives relating to the above groups may also have capital initials. Personal pronouns relating to God or important persons may also be written with capital initials. Unlike the originals, Agricola's texts may also give prominence to other pronouns than the personal, to verbs, adverbs, numerals and intensifies. The punctuation corresponds partly with present usage: complete clauses are usually separated by punctuation marks. One basic difference is that in Agricola, Luther and GVB breathing pauses for reading aloud are indicated with commas or full stops. As Agricola stressed his utterances differently from his models, it follows that his punctuation differs from theirs. Agricola's prefaces to Old Testament writings are also based on Luther's, but only two of them are direct translations. Agricola's exclusions and additions have been studied. The former include many of the brief descriptions of contents in Luther's prefaces. The additions are interesting; sometimes Agricola does not accept Luther's brief biographical summaries about the authors of various biblical books, and uses instead Hieronymus' prefaces in Vulgata. He also refers to the old Jewish work on the human condition, Seder Olam. Agricola's longest preface, to the Psalms, is very much his own. A few pages are devoted to Agricola's summary of commentaries on the Psalms made by two Fathers of the Church — Augustinus Aurelius and Basilius the Great. Here Agricola makes generous use of the popular stylistic device of the time — amplification, an accumulation of more or less synonymous expressions for the same idea. Even in sentences directly translated from Luther and GVB, Agricola often extends the amplifications. Agricola's four rhyming prefaces are not based on any model at all. They were written in the Germanic doggerel metre, and have much in common with late mediaeval rhyming chronicles. Agricola's often drastic way of expressing himself makes delightful reading. / digitalisering@umu

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how changes in long and short interest rates as well as in the slope of the yield curve affect the stock returns of the four major Swedish banks; Svenska Handelsbanken, Nordea Bank, Swedbank, and Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken. Further, the aim of the research is to compare these findings to how the banks perceive that such changes affect their stock returns. The objective is thereof to detect differences and similarities between regressions and interviews, in order to contribute with insights to how the banks can handle their exposure to interest rate risk. Theoretical Framework: Previous research show that banks’ stock returns are affected by many factors, including cash flow news, interest rates, size of the business, and the macroeconomy as a whole. However, banks’ interest rate margins are set to market rates so these are more exposed to and affected by changes in interest rates, especially short ones, than are non-financial institutions. Furthermore, the low interest rate levels and forecasting errors that have been seen lately have contributed to greater uncertainty and higher risk exposures, making banks’ sensitivity increase. Methodology: A mixture of a qualitative and a quantitative methodology is used, where the former consists of interviewing the banks and the latter of regressions through secondary data from Thomson Reuters Eikon and the Riksbank. Conclusion: The major Swedish banks’ stock returns are generally affected by changes in short interest rates but not by changes in long interest rates, with the exception of Handelsbanken being impervious to all such changes. Swedbank’s stock returns are most sensitive than the other banks’ stock returns and it is the only bank affected by changes in the yield curve slope. However, the banks seem to perceive no crucial difference in how their stock returns are affected by changes in short interest rates and long interest rates, concluding that their perceptions of long interest rates are not as in line with our results as are their perceptions of short interest rates. However, it tends to be a more diffuse relationship between changes in long interest rates and stock returns than between changes in short interest rates and stock returns.