The thesis attempts to test basic assumptions of religious economy model (REM) in the Korean context where a recent expansion of fortunetelling occurs. The thesis pays attention to both the supply-side and the demand-side factors of fortunetelling and then explain why the demand-side factors are more important for a better understanding of the popularity of fortunetelling in contemporary Korea. The supply-side factors such as religious regulation, competition, and religious freedom have not worked in Korea in the same way that REM observed in the Western context. Today the Korean religious market faces two unexpected phenomena: one is the popularity of fortunetelling culture, and the other is a slightly decreasing membership of Protestantism, which REM regards as the most competitive religion in religious market. Since the 1980s, traditional values of fortunetelling provided by mudangs or yeoksulgas has been reevaluated and reconstructed in various aspects. Based on the results of field research on participants in Korean fortunetelling, the thesis shows how and why the participants consume traditional fortuntelling service rather than prophetic functions of official religions. Conclusively, the thesis suggests that REM should take into consideration the demand-side factors more importantly when it tries to explain a Korean religious society.

Statistical discrimination is frequently applied to illustrate different economic opportunities among equally able individuals. We use statistics from 1994, the second wave of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, to analyze the income received from paid work jobs as the measure of an individuals economic opportunity. At the same time, Heckmans two-stage procedure is performed to account for possible bias that arises from estimating with only a pool of paid workers. We are interested in testing the following hypotheses: whether employers statistically discriminate among potential workers on the basis of education and immigration status if they have limited information about those workers and whether they learn to revise their judgments as new information is obtained. The results confirm the employer learning and statistical discrimination based on years of schooling hypotheses for the Canadian labour market. The labour market returns to initially unobservable characteristic increases with time spend in the labour market. In addition, wage becomes less related to education that employers initially use to infer an individuals productivity. On the other hand, immigration status is not very informative about the productivity of a worker and the results do not support the hypothesis of statistical discrimination on the basis of immigration status. This paper points out the challenges faced by traditional labour market policies in a world of statistical discrimination and employer learning.

As demand for renewable energy is increasing rapidly, the market for biomass pellets is expected to continue to grow in the near future. Most of the new raw materials that are discussed for pellet production have one thing in common; the production costs will increase compared to using traditional raw materials such as sawdust and planer shavings. The aim of this thesis is to investigate to what degree increased use of new raw materials for pellet production will affect the general pellet prices in Sweden and to survey what plans Swedish pellet producers have concerning new raw materials. To investigate the raw material situation of the Swedish pellet producers an industry survey was performed. Literature studies were also made on previous research in the subject field. Calculations of the production costs for pellets were done for the raw materials sawdust, wet sawmill chips and energy wood respectively.                 New raw materials are already used by the large-scale pellet producers in Sweden. It is mainly the large-scale producers that have started to use new raw materials such as energy wood, wet sawmill chips and dry chips. Around 65% of the respondents of the survey were planning for new raw materials. Most commonly planned for was energy wood. Most of the pellet producers in the survey were planning for raw materials that give high quality pellets. The minimum price for pellets is in the long run set by the production costs. The raw material costs are the most important part of the production costs and according to results from the survey they also affect the pellet prices most. For pellets made of sawdust the raw material costs were typically 2/3 of the total production costs in 2009. In calculations of production costs, wet sawmill chips resulted in a decreased cost by 4% compared to sawdust, mainly because of less expensive raw material. Energy wood also resulted in decreased production costs by 4% compared to sawdust, assuming that the thermal energy needed for drying could be entirely produced with the bark from the debarking process. Both energy wood and wet sawmill chips could hence decrease the production costs and thereby the price for pellets. Even though there is a much greater maximum pellet production potential for wet sawmill chips than for sawdust the amounts of available raw material will, among other factors, depend on the development in the pulp industry.

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In this thesis we study the problem of how to effectively manage and operate a market that attracts trading agents to compete for resources in it. In order to attract more agents to the market, the market needs to have incentive policies. We are particularly interested in the research of the incentive matching policy. We propose a new matching policy with loyalty incentive features. In order to cooperate and improve its performance, we also propose a new accepting policy to work with the matching policy. We use the CAT platform as our test-bed. We describe all the policies and techniques used in the CAT competition in detail. In addition we carry out experiments which further support our proposal.

Statistical discrimination is frequently applied to illustrate different economic opportunities among equally able individuals. We use statistics from 1994, the second wave of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, to analyze the income received from paid work jobs as the measure of an individuals economic opportunity. At the same time, Heckmans two-stage procedure is performed to account for possible bias that arises from estimating with only a pool of paid workers. We are interested in testing the following hypotheses: whether employers statistically discriminate among potential workers on the basis of education and immigration status if they have limited information about those workers and whether they learn to revise their judgments as new information is obtained. The results confirm the employer learning and statistical discrimination based on years of schooling hypotheses for the Canadian labour market. The labour market returns to initially unobservable characteristic increases with time spend in the labour market. In addition, wage becomes less related to education that employers initially use to infer an individuals productivity. On the other hand, immigration status is not very informative about the productivity of a worker and the results do not support the hypothesis of statistical discrimination on the basis of immigration status. This paper points out the challenges faced by traditional labour market policies in a world of statistical discrimination and employer learning.

No description available.

Internationalization within the information communication technology (ICT) sector has become more essential today and this has raised the international competition over customers. The Nordic markets growth and development in its ICT sector has brought new competition and has been the substance of change in business concerning, organizational changes, reduce transaction costs and rationalize and restrict supply chains. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to compare the Nordic ICT markets and the potential for small IT firm namely, Radar Group International AB. To be able to understand Radar Group’s potential in the Nordic IT markets this thesis is divided in to two aspects, market selection and entry mode selection. When we have evaluated the Nordic markets we made, based on our findings recommendations to Radar Group in what market to enter and how to enter that market. For comprehensive understanding of this study, we choose concentration of the theoretical framework committed to the subject, market selection and entry mode selection. Furthermore, we used qualitative method in collecting the empirical data consisting of raw data and in-depth interviews with three international IT firms based in Sweden about their market selection and entry mode selection. Our conclusion indicates that Radar Group should explore the Norwegian market as it offers greater customer potentials and stronger economic growth. While expanding to the Norwegian market, it is our opinion that Radar Group should use Joint venture as their entry mode. It is the most suitable mode for Radar Group in terms of financial aspect, the company’s business concept and previous experience.

No description available.

The business of market research has been expanding since the local enterprises make more and more efforts trying to understand consumers¡¦ needs with the assistances from market research firms offering new research methods and know-how supports. Given the overwhelming popularity of Internet and the fast-growing population of Internet users, online survey has become a popular research method that both academic and research communities widely employed with great potential opporutnities in the coming future. Since established in 1997, Focus Survey Research has been expanding its business scope with election research as its core business, and successfully covered its business to polls and market research since 2004. In order to provide clients with more comprehensive research services, FSR set up its online panel database since 2008 and started its strategy alliance with Easy Travel in 2011 launching E-Survey with a online panel database of 300,000 members, and started its online surevey business. This thesis would like to provide related industries or other new buiness units a reference by deep diving on different development stages of FSR, and evaluate how FSR could use its competitiveness to expand its online survey business and further define its marketing strategy planning. The thesis concludes that the three objectives of the online survey development strategy of FSR as follows: 1) Deploys more comprehensive research techniques to meet the clients¡¦ needs, and provide the clients with value-added services, which can help to expand the business scope of FSR accordingly; 2) Strategy alliances with partners from advertising, marketing, media buying and PR field to better increase the awareness of FSR among the market research industry; 3) FSR¡¦s expertise and experiences of conventional research can help to make up for the weakness of the online survey sampling. The combination of online survey with the expertise from offline survey could develop a better online study platform which could even provide clients with better deliverables. The thesis also aims to provide guidelines for FSR¡¦s online survey further strategy development. Given the marketing strategy of ¡§customized services¡¨, the further online business will cover either research studies among its panel database on social issues / consumer trends or customer satisfaction study among the name list provided by clients. Based on the two major business segments, FSR would be suggested to be positioned as ¡§a proactive and aggressive online survey information provider with good cost performance¡¨. Based on its business function, FSR is recommended to be positioned as ¡§clients¡¦ in-house research consultant and partner, which can provide consultations on research projects, handle research requests and assist coordinations.¡¨