The purpose of this thesis is to analyse if there are any changes in the inflow of Foreign Direct Investments before, during and after a currency crisis. The thesis is based on a theoretical framework and has an empirical part, which use a regression equation. The theoretical framework presents a foundation of the incentives to mak FDI investments and the implications for a host country. Together with the possible link to the level of the real exchange rate in the host country, this thesis, based partly on previous paper written on the subject, presents a regression equation for an empirical analysis. The regression equation is based on a hypothesis about the changes in FDI inflow before, during and after the occurrence of a currency crisis in the host country. The empirical analysis presents different results concerning the link between FDI and a currency crisis. The hypothesis stated in the thesis is that a currency crisis influences FDI inflows. This hypothesis is rejected. Moreover, a currency crisis can have both positive and negative effects on the inflow of FDI for the selected countries. Results find further no similarities in regions or year of occurrence of the currency crises. The depth, length and structure of each currency crisis together with using the right definition of a currency crisis are two important factors relating to the outcomes in this study.

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This paper presents a study of which affect determining factors of foreign direct investment (FDI) has had in China’s eastern provinces. The eastern region is studies to shed more light on why these provinces has been able to attract more FDI than the central and western provinces. FDI theory gives an explanation to why business make direct investments on foreign markets and what factors that affect these decisions. Four of these factors; wage, education level, GDP per capita and level of infrastructure are studied using data from China Statistical Yearbooks. Data is studied by using an index created by the author. The results indicate that education level is of importance when wage levels increase in order to keep attracting FDI. Also, a positive relationship between infrastructure and FDI inflow is found.

The aggravating investment environment in Taiwan has lead to migration of industries to oversea nations. China, with its geographical advantage, lower labor cost, and enormous market potential, has become Taiwan investors¡¦ preferred choice of investment region. Nevertheless, that has affected Taiwan¡¦s economy in many perspectives when a large amount of Taiwanese investors shifted their operations to China, along with their enormous amount of capital. Hence, the main focus of this thesis is to focus and evaluate this impact on Taiwan¡¦s economic growth, import and export structure, industrial adjustment, market competitiveness, employment issues and industrial hollowing-out effect. This thesis analyzes and evaluates several issues from Taiwanese investor¡¦s point of perspective, including: 1.Evaluate whether or not there is industrial hollowing-out effect in Taiwan. 2. The cause of industrial hollowing-out effect in Taiwan. 3. The correlation between investor¡¦s migration to China and industrial hollowing-out effect in Taiwan. 4.The influence of the industrial hollowing-out effect. This thesis adopts historical process research, statistics analysis method, and documentary research as the basis of evaluation. By the 5 criteria indicator (negative net value of foreign direct investment, the growing trend of unemployment rate, and the declining trend of the manufacturing-based industries over the GDP ratio, manufacturing labor productivity, and manufacturing investment) to examine if there is any data or evidence indicating that Taiwan at present is going through industrial hollowing-out. This Thesis has discovered the following facts: 1.The 5 criteria indicating an industrial hollowing-out is in effect. Over the 16 years from 1991 to 2006, the net value of Taiwan¡¦s foreign direct investment is ¡V35.213 billion dollars, and the unemployment rate has been rising since 1995. Manufacturing industries over the GDP ratio has declined from 33.34% to 21.39%. Manufacturing production index growth rate varied from 7.42% to 5.04%. Labor productivity index growth rate declined from 1.29% to -2.37%. And except 2004, manufacturing gross domestic capital formation growth rate (nominal or real) has been decreased since 2001. From these findings stated above, Taiwan has faced all of the 5 trends and hence, Taiwan has begun to face the industrial hollowing-out effects. 2.The causes of Taiwan¡¦s industrial hollowing-out are as follows: (1) the over-extended migration of investment to China. (2) the problem of industries¡¦ structural adjustment. (3) the similarity of exporting products, which leads to the trade competition. (4) insufficient local investment. 3.Industrial hollowing-out effects can be discussed under the perspectives of the employment market, the industries structural and the international market. From the market employment perspective, the industrial hollowing-out results in high unemployment, stagnant wage growth and imbalance on spread of wealth. From industries structural point of view, the hollowing-out effect causes struggling in industries technological advancement, difficulties in research and development for manufacturing industries, limitations of cooperation between global enterprises and the restriction of the economy growth. On international market level, the hollowing out effect would create the negative impacts such as difficulties in industrial restructuring, the tremendous international competition, the replacement of products manufactured in Taiwan with those made by other nations, and the inability to attract more foreign investment.

Abstract Construction investment is regarded as the leading cause in Real Estate industry for a long time. During the process, land development is an important factor for company's profitability. However, professions in this industry always rely on personal experience to estimate the land development potential. In most cases, owners or upper management are the ones to make the decision. Not only the decision conflict the open policy, it also lack of the base from lesson learns after the project wrap up. It limited the build up of experience with in companies. After interviewing industry experts, we found that the reasons people rely purely on experience among land estimate industry, besides the unique characteristic of land, accuracy and trust worthy of information, is limited to estimation during development; especially data of the direct cost, indirect cost, annual interest rate, and return ratio is missing the land estimation technical specification. Thus, people in current industry normally use personal experience or the reference material from government. Project budget in construction industry normally is pretty huge, management budget is occupied in a small percentage; thus, members normally do not want to spend time to analyze in detail in the beginning. This research base on documents and experts interview, it verifies and gather analysis of land development estimation. At the same time, it also gathers current ERP¡]Enterprise Resource Planing¡^ to get the real internal data. Using DSS system to assist members to process decision-making characteristics and What-If functions in which supports decision maker's decision. Utilize historical statistics and market fluctuation to process estimation and provide project data and comparison pie chart. This will provide the decision makers more effective comparison to different projects. Use land developing analysis estimate to establish an estimation structure and foundation for business to adjust accordingly when government regulation changes. An updated estimation way of Decision support system will provides an advanced tool for land developers. This will help decision makers in land development estimation to reduced the blind spots and mistake due to overly rely on personal experiences.

The ongoing global recession has made the economy widely discussed in recent months. As individuals, who are part of, and affected by what is happening in the global economy, we found it interesting to investigate the current financial situation on a more individual and personal level. We intended to find out more about personal financial advising, how it is conducted and what the financial advisors suggest we do with our money today. Is it best to stick the money under the mattress or has the current financial situation brought on a perfect opportunity invest money in the financial markets? We hope to find patterns on how financial advisors recommend that we save and invest our money today. Also, we want to investigate what these recommendations are based on and how these financial advisors work to present these advices. We intend to look for similarities within the branch in the advising process, as well as the outcome of the process in order to create guidelines for saving and investment. We intended to answer these questions by conducting a qualitative study where we interviewed six financial advisors at three different financial institutions. We take on a constructionist ontological position assuming that reality is constructed by the perception of social actors. Furthermore, we have taken an interpretivistic epistemological stance that view knowledge based on interpretations, and try to understand the world from the research subjects' point of view. We utilized a number of theories in order to support and build our study. These theories were used in order to help us construct and conduct our collection methods of primary data, and further used to aid us in analyzing the interview findings. Analyzing the empirical results we learned that the basis in the financial advising process is fairly standardized within the branch. First, personal and financial information is gathered in order to assess the client's unique situation, followed by the creation of a risk profile, which is very important according to the respondents. Even though the study shows that there are different methods to collect this information and create these profiles, the patterns show that all institutions work around the same concept, that every client is an individual that needs to be assessed as unique. We also learned that the financial crisis have not had a significant impact on the financial advising itself, but rather in the attitudes of the clients. Furthermore, the increased level of documentation due to the new laws is the only evident change, with minor signs of an increased protection for both the advisor and the client. Finally, conclusions about saving and investment today were drawn by finding patterns and common denominators between the respondents advices for the individual profiles created for this study.

ABSTRACT e-Services, or customer service, over the Internet is becoming increasingly popular and well traveled, but it is also rapidly changing along with new needs and demands as well as new technology. Many companies are about to experience the change from just using the web as a static service tool to be able to use the web as an interactive medium and an online extension of their business. Simplexica has developed, and implemented, their own e-service where their customers have access to their personal pages where they receive news and publications. The main purpose, though, is to make their technical expertise available for their trusted partners and customers in order for them to design their own technical system and to place orders online. Simplexica’s experience from the e-service implementation has proven to be a success in some markets, within some areas and with some customers, but the e-service is still struggling to get utilized to it’s full potential and showing an return on investment. The purpose and objective of this thesis report is to analyze and generally describe the e-service portal and the e-service business process used by Simplexica today in order to find areas and functions within e-service which Simplexica can use and apply to improve their existing e-service business process. This thesis report also aims to analyze and evaluate the return on investment of the e-service. More specifically the thesis work strives to answer:  How could the e-service process in place at Simplexica today be described?  How to best globally utilize the full concept of e-service at Simplexica?  Where is the return on investment at Simplexica? The theoretical framework includes e-services, customer relationship management, business process management and methods of identifying gains, which is combined with a hermeneutic scientific perspective, a deductive research approach and a qualitative method in order to identify and evaluate different ways of calculating a return on investment that would be useful to Simplexica. There is no simple solution to the dilemma, but the author summarizes the findings and recommendations in a suggested action plan where changes within Simplexica’s current e-service concept and the financial benefits of the investment, are in focus by:  removing the barriers for using the e-service where a key element is to create a common understanding, internally and externally, for their current e-service and e-process.  measuring key indicators and to incorporate crucial customer data  analyzing the return on investment and estimating the effect and value of intangible benefits  establishing a model for determining a successful investment based on a variant of the 5-table  extending, upgrading and changing the current e-service by using new technology as, for instance, M2M and e-mail channeling, and to introduce a total customer service strategy throughout Simplexica.

This paper presents an empirical study of the determinants that drive the investment performance of China’s venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) funds. Using data on VC/PE funds backed initial public offerings (IPOs) from ChiNext between October 2009 to October 2011 and the internal rate of return (IRR) as the measurement for investment performance, this paper finds that fund experience has a positive influence on investment performance whereas investment scale and investment duration have a negative influence on investment performance.

This paper analyses how corruption in a host country affects the amount of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) it receives. It discusses a model in which FDI is explained by GDP, corruption and the distance between the host country and the origin of capital. It then runs a regression comparing FDI from developed to 46 developing countries, which shows that corruption is a significant variable and it does have a negative effect on total FDI. It then compares if there are any difference depending on the origin of Capital, comparing USA, Europe and Japan. Capital from USA is the most sensitive to corruption. It also shows that capital from Europe is the least responsive to distance, as a factor of explaining FDI. The paper also runs a base mark estimation of what could be expected if corruption levels changed. We can see that if Dominican Republic would have reduced the level of corruption to that of Uruguay, it could have increased the average FDI per year, from 0,8% of GDP to 1,4%. If Argentina, who has a higher FDI over GDP than expected given its level of corruption, would have reduced its level of corruption to the level of Chile, it could have increased the FDI over GDP from 2% to 3,6%. The implications of the results of this paper are that public policies should aim to reduce corruption levels because they have a negative effect on FDI and on the living standard.

The overall goal of this research study is to determine if there is a correlation between electronic health (e-Health) adoption, e-Health investment and better health outcomes in a hospital setting. To carry out this research, data with respect to e-Health spending, e-Health adoption and relevant health outcome indicator results for Ontario hospitals were analyzed to determine if there is a correlation between the variables. There were significant positive correlations between e-Health adoption and investment variables; indicating that higher e-Health investment is associated with greater e-Health adoption. There were significant correlations between variables related to e-Health adoption, investment and certain health outcomes. For example, increased e-Health adoption was significantly and negatively correlated with variables related to Length of Stay (LOS), which suggests that increased e-Health adoption is associated with lower LOS. This study attempts to create a foundation upon which Return On Investment (ROI) may be calculated for e-Health technology.