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The real estate market has been of great interest since the rise in home foreclosures in US, which started in the late 2006. The purpose of this thesis is to examine a possible relationship between the factors presented in DiPasquale and Wheaton’s (1996) model which explains the market linkages between the property market and asset market, and the Swedish real estate companies listed on the Swedish stock market OMX. The real estate stock market is, divided in to groups of 3, which represented the dependent variable. The repo rate, CPI, expected inflation, macro index, disposable income, GDP and a real estate price index are the explanatory variables. Stockholm Stock Market All- Share Index (OMXSPI) is also included as a possible explanatory variable. The main findings in most of the estimations for the groups and years, is that the OMXSPI is of significance at the 10 percent level. The other variables did not show any significant result based on the 10 percent significance level, According to the results it seems like the volatility has increased over time in the real estate stock market with respect to the OMXSPI. That is; the risk has increased significantly from the period 1996-1999 to the later periods.

<p>The real estate market has been of great interest since the rise in home foreclosures in</p><p>US, which started in the late 2006. The purpose of this thesis is to examine a possible</p><p>relationship between the factors presented in DiPasquale and Wheaton’s (1996) model</p><p>which explains the market linkages between the property market and asset market, and</p><p>the Swedish real estate companies listed on the Swedish stock market OMX. The real</p><p>estate stock market is, divided in to groups of 3, which represented the dependent</p><p>variable. The repo rate, CPI, expected inflation, macro index, disposable income, GDP</p><p>and a real estate price index are the explanatory variables. Stockholm Stock Market All-</p><p>Share Index (OMXSPI) is also included as a possible explanatory variable.</p><p>The main findings in most of the estimations for the groups and years, is that the</p><p>OMXSPI is of significance at the 10 percent level. The other variables did not show any</p><p>significant result based on the 10 percent significance level,</p><p>According to the results it seems like the volatility has increased over time in the real</p><p>estate stock market with respect to the OMXSPI. That is; the risk has increased</p><p>significantly from the period 1996-1999 to the later periods.</p>

This thesis is a part of the water development project conducted by Svenskt Vatten, which is the Swedish Water and Wastewater Association (SWWA) as well as Tyréns, a consultancy company with offices based in Stockholm, Sweden. Prior to this thesis work, a quality assessment was conducted for some of the locations provided by municipalities in Sweden. This thesis builds upon the revised water consumption data, and also continues to work with validating and modifying the water measurement data in order to proceed with the next step of the water development project, which is to identify any trends in the temporal variation of water consumption. The main objective of this thesis work is to investigate the influence of climatic, time-related and categorical factors on water consumption data collected for different regions in Sweden, and includes a number of different sectors such as residential, industrial and agricultural water user sectors. For the analysis of data, spectral analysis and sinusoidal modelling will be applied in order to find the periodicity of the data, and then simulate the fitted sinusoidal equation to the observed water consumption data for the hourly interval period. Multiple linear regression analysis is then used to assess what independent variables such as climate, time-related and categorical variables can explain the variation in water consumption over hourly and daily periods of time.  Spectral analysis identifies high peaks in the spectral density of the data at 12 and 24 hour cycles, for the hourly water consumption data. For the total daily consumption of water, there is a peak at 7 days, which clarifies that there is a weekly pattern occurring throughout the year. The results from the simple linear regression analysis, where the linear relationship between temperature and water consumption was determined, reveals that the water consumption tends to increase within an increasing temperature, where in Lönashult, Alvesta municipality the water demand increased by 5.5% with every 2 ºC rise in temperature, at a threshold of 12 ºC. For Kalix municipality the three areas selected have around 1-2 % increase in water demand with every 2 ºC rise in temperature for the period of May to December. In Gothenburg, areas that were mixed villa areas or areas with summer homes there was a rise of around 2-12 % in water demand, however areas that are situated in the inner city Gothenburg, or that have majority student housing, the water consumption tends to decrease by 2-7% in water demand with every 2 ºC rise in temperature, with a threshold of 12 ºC. In multiple regression analysis, the hourly water consumption results in adjusted R2 values were in the range from 0.58 to 0.87 (58-87%) for the best model approach and therefore has a significant relationship between water consumption and the explanatory variables chosen for this study. For the daily water consumption, the adjusted R2 values were in the range of 0.22-0.83 (22-83%).  The adjusted R2 values are lower for certain areas and can be explained by a number of factors, such as the different variables used for the daily water consumption analysis, as variables that explain more the periodicity of the data such as the sinusoidal fitted variable and hourly or night/day changes in consumption are not included. As well as this, not all independent variables such as the climate variables were available or complete for particular time periods, and also errors in the data can lead to a significantly lower R2 value.

Public buildings and other public facilities are essential for the functioning and quality of life in modern societies, but they also frequently have a significant negative impact on the natural environment. Public agencies, with their large portfolios of facilities, have faced considerable challenges in recent years in minimizing their negative environmental impacts and energy consumption and coping with shortages of financial capital to invest in new facilities and operate and maintain existing ones, while still meeting their mission goals. These range from the need to provide a quality workplace for their staff to providing a public service and long term benefits to the public. The concept of green building has emerged as a set of objectives and practices designed to reduce negative environment impacts and other challenges while enhancing the functionality of built facilities. However, the prevailing belief related to implementing green building is that incorporating Green Building Strategies and Technologies (GBSTs) increases the initial cost of constructing a facility while potentially reducing its life cycle costs. Thus, this research deals with optimizing the design of individual facilities to balance the initial cost investment for GBSTs versus their potential Life Cycle Cost (LCC) savings without the need to conduct detailed life cycle cost analysis during the early capital planning and budget phases in public sector projects. The purpose of this study is to develop an approach for modeling the general relationship between investments in initial costs versus savings in LCCs involved in implementing green building strategies in public capital projects. To address the research question, this study developed multiple regression models to identify the relationships between GBSTs and their initial cost premiums, operating costs, and LCCs. The multiple regression models include dummy variables because this is a convenient way of applying a single regression equation to represent several nominal variables, which here consist of initial, operating, maintenance, and repair and replacement costs, and ordinal variables, which in this case are the GBST alternatives considered. These new regression models can be used to identify the relationship between GBST alternatives, initial cost premiums, annual operating costs and LCC in the earliest stage of a project, when public agencies are at the capital planning and budgeting stages of facility development, without necessarily needing to know the precise details of design and implementation for a particular building. In addition, this study also proposes and tests a method to generate all the necessary cost data based on building performance models and industry accepted standard cost data. This statistical approach can easily be extended to accommodate additional GBSTs that were not included in this study to identify the relationship between their initial cost premium and their potential LCC saving at the earliest stage of facility development. In addition, this approach will be a useful tool for other institutional facility owners who manage large facility portfolios with significant annual facility investments and over time should help them minimize the environmental impacts caused by their facilities. / Ph. D.

This study examined the importance of the Big-Five personality traits and work values for the prediction of entrepreneurial intent. Data were collected from a sample of 261 undergraduate students at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Results of a hierarchical regression analysis revealed that none of the Big-Five personality factors predicted entrepreneurial intent; however, the importance individuals attached to achievement and social-affective work values accounted for 9% of the variance in entrepreneurial intent, above and beyond personality. The results lend support to the argument that entrepreneurship is a cultural phenomenon and that entrepreneurs are ‘made’ as opposed to ‘born’. Consequently, the implications of culture and gender characterization are discussed in relation to entrepreneurial intentions. Finally, a dynamic model of entrepreneurial emergence is proposed and suggestions for future research are discussed.

According to the change of Taiwan economic structure, Taiwan is gradually moving into an aging society and more and more population in Taiwan will suffer from chronic disease in the near future. Hypertension is not only the first cause of death among the top ten COD in Taiwan, but is also the major source of other four types of disease in the top ten COD list. Market size for hypertension treatment has enormous potential thus all multi-national pharmaceutical companies seize for opportunities in it. Hypertension treatment research and development are always a priority for pharmaceutical companies and medical research centers, however, new compound takes a long time to develop and patent protection period is getting shorter, therefore, how to increase physician acceptance of a new compound becomes the critical success factor of the new launch product for pharmaceutical companies. This research is an attempt to study the relationship between ¡§Current Prescription¡¨, ¡§New Drug Usage¡¨ and ¡§Environmental Factors-Medical Provider¡¨ and ultimately to find the vital factors which would influence the ¡§Willingness¡¨ of the physicians to prescribe product X. One aim of this research is also to understand the potential factors which would affect the physician acceptance of a new mechanism drug. Based on the Multiple Regression Analysis, Analysis of Variance and Factor Analysis, the research results are as follows: 1. The effect of ¡§Current Prescription¡¨ on ¡§Willingness to Prescribe New Product X¡¨ is limited, and factors such as ¡§Satisfaction on Current Prescription¡¨ and ¡§Current Prescription¡¨ do not influence the ¡§Willingness to Prescribe New Product X¡¨. Only the satisfaction of BLOPRESS and PLENDIL and current prescription percentage on ADALOT OROS and CO-DIOVAN show a significant affect. So the research hypothesis H-1 and H1-3 are partially supported. AS far as ¡§Level of Fame¡¨ of the product shows a significant influence on the ¡§Willingness to Prescribe New Product X¡¨, so the research hypothesis H1-2 is fully supported. 2. Relationship between ¡§New Drug Usage¡¨ and ¡§Willingness to Prescribe New Product X¡¨ is not all significant. ¡§External Information¡¨, ¡§Physician Specialty¡¨ and factors a physician will consider when prescribing did not have a large impact on whether the physician will prescribe the new drug or not. Only the familiarity on ¡§Renin system is an import treatment indicator on blood pressure control and organ protection¡¨, ¡§External Information Orientated¡¨, and ¡§Market Follower¡¨ type of physicians and ¡§Will still use broadly to treat, even despite the high cost of new drugs¡¨ and ¡§New product X will always be part of the prescription in combination therapy¡¨ show significant impact. Thus hypothesis H2-1, H2-3 & H2-4 are partial supported. ¡¨Type of Patient¡¨ shows no difference in effect physician¡¦s willingness to prescribe new product X, so the hypothesis H2-2 are not supported. 3. ¡§Level of Fame¡¨ just has partial significance effect to physician¡¦s ¡§Current Prescription¡¨. ¡§Level of fame¡¨ for CCB, ARB and ACEI have significant effect to the physician¡¦s ¡§Current Prescription¡¨, but other drugs like ALPHA BLOCKER, BETA BLOCKER & OTHERS have no effect to the physician¡¦s ¡§Current Prescription¡¨, so the research hypothesis is partially supported. 4. ¡§Environment Factors¡ÐMedical Provider¡¨ has limited effect to physician¡¦s ¡§Current Prescription¡¨. Among all the physician specialties, only Cardiovascular, Nephrology and Meta/Endo physicians show a difference in ¡§Current Prescription¡¨ among all specialties. ¡§Type of Hospital¡¨ shows no effect on ¡§Current Prescription¡¨, thus the research hypothesis is not supported. According to the findings above, pharmaceutical companies should increase call frequency from sales representatives to the physicians; increased call frequency will effectively increase the brand awareness of the new launch products and also to increase the new product prescription rate. Improvement of Sales Training and after sales service can also be a key area for improved for the pharmaceutical companies to improve the effectiveness and efficiency for product promotion. In addition, product efficacy and treatment differentiation messages should also be customized for physicians in different specialties and in different types of hospitals; increased frequency and customized messages will ensure the success of the new product launch.

<p>This essay casts light on the quantitative aspect of the media representation of foreign news. The purpose of the essay is not only to describe the media representation of the countries of the world, but also to explain the representation out of structures that are mirrored by the mass media. Four hypotheses are stated that are operationalized in the research. These are treating four different factors that are believed to affect the representation, economy, geographical distance, cultural distance and the size of the population. A fifth hypothesis is stating that economy is the most influential of the factors. The factors are tested by using multiple regression analyses. Four Swedish newspapers have been selected for the study, two morning papers, one evening paper and one free daily newspaper. The representation is measured by the number of articles retrieved by searching a database containing the four newspapers. The search have included 183 countries and all articles from 2007 for these countries.</p><p>The results shows that economy, geographical distance and size of population are the most important factors for the media representation. Economy is evinced to be the most influential of the factors.</p>

Samples of stores were drawn from two chains, Pizza Hut and Zale Corporation. Two different samples were taken from Pizza Hut. Site specific material and sales data were furnished by the companies and demographic material relative to each site was gathered. Analysis of variance tests for linearity were run on the three regression equations developed from the data and each of the three regressions equations were found to have a statistically significant linear relationship. Statistically significant differences were found among similar variables used in the prediction of sales by using Fisher's Z' Transformations on the correlation coefficients. Eight of the eighteen variables used in the Pizza Hut study were found to be statistically different between the two regions used in the study. Additionally, analysis of variance tests were used to show that traffic pattern variables were not better predictors than demographic variables.

This study aims to determine the effect of school conditions on learner reading achievement in primary schools in South Africa. Reading skills are not only imperative for further study but are essential for economic and meaningful citizenship. Initiatives such as the Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign, geared to improve the quality of education for all children and to ensure improved learner achievement have resulted in an increase in educational spending. Despite such initiatives, learner achievement remains poor. In order to measure the relative relationship between school conditions and learner reading achievement, this study focused on selected variables from the PIRLS 2006 South African data, notably from Grade 5 learner reading achievement, teacher and school questionnaires. A secondary data analysis through multiple regression technique was utilised in an attempt to measure those school conditions that may enhance or impede learner reading achievement. This study follows the tradition of school effectiveness research by utilising the context-input-process-output (integrated model for school effectiveness research) model as espoused by Scheerens (2000; 2005). The integrated model was adapted combining school and classroom factors in order to measure the effect of school wide processes on learner reading achievement. Although this study was unable to measure the effect of educational leadership on learner reading achievement, it found significant school and classroom factors associated with learner reading achievement. This study highlights the importance of improving the teaching and learning of literacy across all 11 official languages. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / tm2015 / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / MEd / Unrestricted