Vid import av varor från en plats utanför EU till Sverige uppstår en skyldighet att betalamervärdesskatt i enlighet med 1 kap. 1 § första stycket 3 mervärdesskattelagen(1994:200) ML. En beskattningsbar person som bedriver ekonomisk verksamhet harenligt 8 kap. 3 § ML rätt att göra avdrag för ingående mervärdesskatt som hänför sig tillimport. En utländsk beskattningsbar person har enligt 10 kap. 1 § ML återbetalningsrättför ingående mervärdesskatt. Vid import är det vanligt förekommande att det skermisstag som kan leda till att en aktör inte fullföljer Tullverkets föreskrifter. Ett sådantförfarande benämns bristande efterlevnad av tullagstiftningen. Vid bristande efterlevnadav tullagstiftningen har ingen aktör rätt till avdrag eller återbetalning av importmomsenenligt Skatteverket och Tullverket. En aktör har vid självrättelse inte heller någonavdrags- respektive återbetalningsrätt av importmomsen. Det har alltså ingen betydelseatt den bristande efterlevnaden uppkommit till följd av misstag. En aktör förlorar alltsåsin rätt trots att hen inte haft för uppsåt att kringgå bestämmelserna om import.Förfarandet leder till att en inlåsningseffekt av importmoms uppstår. En viktig del avmervärdesskattesystemet är rätten till avdrag och återbetalning av ingåendemervärdesskatten. Enligt Europeiska unionens praxis är avdragsrätten en oskiljaktig delav mervärdesskattesystemet varför medlemsstaterna inte får begränsa denna rätt.Systemet bygger på neutralitetsprincipen samt reciprocitetsprincipen som innebär attden beskattningsbara personen inte ska belastas skatten och att den utgående skatten försäljaren blir den ingående skatten för köparen.SKV:s och Tullverkets bedömningssätt har skiljt sig från EU-domstolens och HFD:srättspraxis. HFD har genom två nya avgöranden fastställt när importmoms kan utkrävasoch medgett återbetalning till den aktör som påförts importmomsen. Avgörandena ärvägledande eftersom det dagligen importeras varor till Sverige och förfarandet att enaktör påförs importmoms vid bristande efterlevnad som uppkommit till följd av misstagär vanligt förekommande.

No description available.

The growing importance of trade internationally as well as for the United States (U.S.) spawned a body of literature concerning import demand, export supply, and trade balance. Most of the empirical work to date has employed estimates of commodity import demand functions derived from traditional linear and log-linear functional forms. These specifications of import demand impose separability restrictions on the consumer's choice between domestic and foreign goods, in addition to confining import demand elasticities to constant values. The policy recommendations made on the basis of the import demand elasticities derived from these traditional models may be misleading. In this study, a more flexible model of import demand is employed. The model allows a more flexible characterization of the underlying preference structure for both domestic and imported commodities. Import demand functions are then derived from the underlying model which possess the properties of the flexible characterization of consumer preference. Wheat import data by major source of supply to selected EEC countries and Japan are used to estimate the parameters of the derived wheat import demand relationships. The results of the estimation and tests suggest that the use of the traditional restricted model may be suspect even though such models are easily used in the analysis of trade policy. The traditional model was rejected by use of a likelihood ratio test of model specifications for all import demand functions for the selected importing countries analyzed. This suggests that the associated import demand and income elasticities are not constant but variable (derived from each data point) in contrast to previous assumptions regarding the behavior or import demand and associated elasticities. The compensated own-price elasticities of import demand for U.S. wheat in the Netherlands and Japan were found to be generally inelastic, close to unitary elastic in the United Kingdom (U.K.), and elastic in the Italian market during the time period studied. These estimated elasticities were then used to analyze the impacts of selected trade policies such as export subsidies and taxes, tariff reductions and threshold price systems, quotas and price stabilization.

As society becomes more data-driven, new alternative technologies to the more traditional relational database model arise. One of these technologies is the graph database model, which stores the data as nodes and edges, where the edges define the relationships between the nodes representing entities. Graph databases are a great fit for data with dense and dynamic relationships, such as social networks, fraud detection and recommendation engines. At the Swedish Pensions Agency, the unit working with fraud detection has rapidly increased personnel due to increased demand for fraud prevention. New technologies are being investigated to improve the efficiency in both detection of current fraudulent activities and also to detect suspicious activities and persons to prevent fraud from even happening. The scope of this thesis is to develop a tool as a proof of concept to import data through the web browser into a graph database, namely Neo4j. The evaluations show that importing nodes and relationships with the tool is slower than importing with Neo4j LOAD CSV. However, the performance is still reasonable for data sets of a few hundred thousand nodes or relationships. The evaluations with the Swedish Pensions Agency show that the tool could bring value to them by removing the complexity of writing code.

This research examines the percentage of imported foods sold in stores at three levels of the food retail hierarchy—small-sized retail food stores, known locally as colmados; medium-sized food retail stores, or super-colmados; and the large supermarkets, or supermercados —in the Dominican Republic. It also considers variations in sources of imported foods for the three types of stores. Data were collected during fieldwork conducted in Verónâ a small town located in the province of La Altagracia on the eastern end of the Dominican Republic—over a three-week period from August 15 to September 9, 2009. A stratified random sample was selected along the primary highway in Verón consisting of 15 stores. At these stores, the principal investigator collected inventory data and conducted interviews with storeowners and employees. The findings suggest that food import dependency increases as the level in the food retail hierarchy, or store size, increases. / Master of Science

No description available.

No description available.

The thesis explores how social responsibility is addressed by firms importing certified organic food from developing countries to Sweden. The approaches to social responsibility of 13 Swedish firms were investigated, of which the majority were small or medium size (< 250 employees) and none belonged to the market-dominating group of grocery retailers. The results show that a majority of the firms consider social responsibility in relation with their suppliers but in view of scarce resources trust intermediary firms for follow up. Many mix ethical trading approaches focused on production conditions, and fair trade initiatives focused on community development. Companies experience uncertainty as to whether organic certification that includes requirements for social responsibility will render a higher price premium. The co-existence of multiple social schemes related to organic trade enables flexibility but in some cases resulted in a perception of subjectivity and differentiation of control measures, which risks to result in a loss of systemic trust. Working through intermediaries has benefits but at the same time leads to the loss of connection to the place and people that the social responsibility targets. Organic certification schemes need to be clearer about the scope and purpose of included social aspects. Further research is needed to understand and compare the social effects and differences at farm or factory level, in relation to the four identified approaches to social responsibility in organic trade. The four approaches were:  organic certification according to a standard with social requirements, combining organic certification according to minimum production standard either with a separate social label, or with a business supplier code of conduct, or finally the belief that conversion to organic farming will automatically bring about social benefits. / Uppsatsen undersöker hur företag som importerar certifierade ekologiska livsmedel från utvecklingsländer arbetar med socialt ansvar. 13 svenska firmor intervjuades om sina förhållningssätt, varav de flesta var små eller medelstora (<250 anställda) och ingen tillhörde de marknadsdominerade dagligvaruhandelskedjorna. Resultaten visar att en majoritet av företagen tar upp socialt ansvar med sina underleverantörer, men då resurserna är begränsade handlar de flesta via mellanhänder som också ansvarar för uppföljningen. Företagen upplever en osäkerhet kring om ekologisk certifiering som inkluderar socialt ansvar berättigar till ett högre pris på varan. Förekomsten av olika sociala program relaterat till ekologisk produktion möjliggör flexibilitet men uppfattas också av vissa som subjektivt och oklart i fråga om kontrollmekanismerna. Detta riskerar att minska tilliten till systemet. Det har fördelar att arbeta via mellanhänder men samtidigt förloras den direkta kopplingen till platsen för produktionen och till producenterna. Ytterligare forskning behövs för att förstå och jämföra vilka sociala effekter och olikheter på producentnivå som kan uppnås med de fyra identiferade förhållningssätten till socialt ansvar: Ekologisk certifiering enligt en standard som innehåller socialt ansvar, en kombination av minimistandard för ekologisk produktion och separat social certifiering eller kombinerad med företagets egen sociala uppförandekod, och slutligen synsättet att ekologisk produktion automatiskt resulterar i bättre sociala förutsättningar

L'ostéoarthrose (OA) est la forme la plus commune d’arthrite et son étiologie demeure encore méconnue. Les travaux du Dr Moreau et son équipe ont permis de mettre en évidence une quasi perte d’expression du facteur de transcription Pitx1 dans les chondrocytes OA et la protéine PHB-1 a été identifiée comme étant membre d’un complexe répresseur pouvant lier le promoteur de Pitx1. Le but de la présente étude était de confirmer l’accumulation anormale de PHB-1 dans le noyau des chondrocytes OA, tel que suggéré par des données préliminaires, et d’identifier les mécanismes impliqués dans son import ou rétention au noyau. Pour ce faire, un volet mécanistique utilisant les lignées C28/I2 et U2OS fut combiné à l’étude clinique des chondrocytes articulaires de patients OA et de sujets sains. Les résultats de cette étude démontrent que chez 55 pourcent des patients OA, la Prohibitine s’accumule dans le noyau des chondrocytes articulaires et que cette accumulation corrèle avec une augmentation de la sumoylation totale dans le noyau des cellules OA. Le présent projet de recherche propose pour la première fois qu’une sumoylation accrue au sein des cellules OA pourrait être responsable de l’accumulation nucléaire de PHB-1, médiée par sa liaison aux protéines SUMO-1 via un domaine de liaison aux SUMOs (SBM) localisé aux résidus 76 à 79 de PHB-1. Les résultats de cette étude ont aussi permis de mettre en évidence que dans les chondrocytes OA, les protéines SUMO-1 et SUMO-2/3 s’accumulent dans des corps nucléaires de type PML, suggérant un recrutement de protéines interagissant avec les SUMOs au sein de ces structures dans les cellules OA. Nous sommes persuadés que cette étude générera des retombées importantes non seulement au niveau fondamental pour la compréhension des mécanismes moléculaires liés à la biologie des chondrocytes articulaires, mais aussi au niveau du développement d’outils génétiques permettant le dépistage de l’arthrose à un stade précoce. / Despite intensive efforts, the aetiology of Osteoarthritis (OA) remains elusive, however, genetic factors have been found to be strong determinants of the disease. Recent studies in Dr. Moreau’s lab have demonstrated an aberrant nuclear accumulation of PHB-1, a ubiquitous protein implicated in multiple cellular processes, in human OA articular chondrocytes. Moreover, we have shown that PHB-1 is part of a repressor complex that binds to the promoter of Pitx1 transcription factor, through the recognition of an E2F-like binding site which could contribute to OA onset. The role of Pitx1 and PHB-1 in OA pathogenesis is not clear, the goal of this study was to characterize PHB-1 nuclear accumulation in OA chondrocytes and to determine the molecular mechanisms by which PHB-1 accumulates in the nucleus of OA chondrocytes. In our studies we used U2Os and C28/I2 as well as human chondrocytes obtained from OA and control patients. Our data confirmed that PHB-1 accumulates in the nucleus of about 55 percent of OA patients and that this accumulation correlates with an increased in sumoylation of the proteins in the nuclear fraction of OA chondrocytes. Present findings suggest that increased sumoylation could trigger PHB-1 nuclear accumulation through binding of PHB-1 to a sumoylated protein via a SUMO interacting motif (SBM) mapped to residus 76 to 79 of PHB-1. Moreover, these results demonstrate that sumoylated proteins accumulate in PML nuclear bodies in the nucleus of OA chondrocytes, suggesting the recruitment of SUMO-interacting proteins in PML bodies of arthritic chondrocytes. Further studies are needed to identify the potential sumoylated proteins which are interacting with PHB1.

Les mutations dans le génome mitochondrial humain sont souvent associées à de graves maladies neuromusculaires. Mon projet de thèse a consisté tout d’abord au développement d’une stratégie thérapeutique basée sur l’import mitochondrial de molécules d’ARN. J’ai pu démontrer que l’expression stable de molécules d’ARN recombinantes dans les cellules humaines permet de diminuer le taux de mutations pathogéniques de l’ADN mitochondrial. Dans une seconde partie, j’ai élaboré une nouvelle méthode, CoLoC-seq, permettant l’identification à grande échelle des ARN localisés dans les mitochondries. En appliquant cette méthode sur des cellules humaines, j’ai pu confirmer l’adressage mitochondrial de certains ARN cytosoliques non-codant et identifier de nouveaux ARN potentiellement importés. Ces données permettront d’élargir les connaissances sur les voies d’adressage mitochondrial des ARN, leurs mécanismes et leur régulation, et d’optimiser les stratégies thérapeutiques basées sur l’import d’ARN. / Mutations in the human mitochondrial genome are often associated with severe neuromuscular disorders. The first part of my thesis project consisted in the development of a therapeutic strategy based on the mitochondrial import of RNA molecules. I demonstrated that the stable expression of recombinant RNA molecules in human cells induced the decrease of the pathogenic mutation load in mitochondrial DNA. In the second part, I developed a nex method, CoLoC-seq, for the large-scale identification of RNA species localized in the mitochondria. By applying this method to human cells, I confirmed the mitochondrial targeting of some non-coding cytosolic RNAs and identified new potentially imported RNAs. These data will broaden the knowledge on the pathway of RNA targeting into the mitochondria, its mechanisms and regulation, and will allow optimization of the therapeutic strategies based on RNA import.