This thesis first examines the determinants of earnings management in an international setting using the Limited Investor Attention Model of Hirshleifer and Teoh (2003). The model predicts that investor attention reduces earnings management. I have four key findings. First, I document that financial analysts curb adjusted absolute abnormal accruals and absolute performance-matched abnormal accruals in global firms. Second, I document that institutional block-holdings curb adjusted absolute abnormal accruals across the world. Third, I document that analyst following is related to more reduction in earnings management in common law countries than in code-law countries. Fourth, I find that institutional block-holders are more effective monitors in common law countries than in code law countries. This thesis also examines the relation between investor attention and stock mispricing of abnormal accruals in an international setting using the Limited Investor Attention Model of Hirshleifer and Teoh (2003). Consistent with the model’s hypothesis that investor attention reduces stock mispricing, I document three key findings. First, I find a significant and negative correlation between stock mispricing and analyst following in global firms. Second, stock mispricing is negatively correlated with institutional ownership in U.S. firms. Stock mispricing is not significantly correlated with institutional block-holdings in global firms. Third, stock mispricing per dollar of abnormal accrual is decreasing in analyst following for sufficiently large abnormal accruals in U.S. and global firms.

We investigate if the size of goodwill compared to total assets has any effect on the shareholders return on companies listed on the Swedish Stock market. We put up two different hypotheses with a foundation from previous research and later dismiss one of them. Our evidence does not show any indicators that the size of goodwill have an effect on the shareholders return, which brings us to believe that there, from a share holders point of view, isn’t any need for concern regarding the standards about accounting for goodwill as stated by IFRS.

This thesis first examines the determinants of earnings management in an international setting using the Limited Investor Attention Model of Hirshleifer and Teoh (2003). The model predicts that investor attention reduces earnings management. I have four key findings. First, I document that financial analysts curb adjusted absolute abnormal accruals and absolute performance-matched abnormal accruals in global firms. Second, I document that institutional block-holdings curb adjusted absolute abnormal accruals across the world. Third, I document that analyst following is related to more reduction in earnings management in common law countries than in code-law countries. Fourth, I find that institutional block-holders are more effective monitors in common law countries than in code law countries. This thesis also examines the relation between investor attention and stock mispricing of abnormal accruals in an international setting using the Limited Investor Attention Model of Hirshleifer and Teoh (2003). Consistent with the model’s hypothesis that investor attention reduces stock mispricing, I document three key findings. First, I find a significant and negative correlation between stock mispricing and analyst following in global firms. Second, stock mispricing is negatively correlated with institutional ownership in U.S. firms. Stock mispricing is not significantly correlated with institutional block-holdings in global firms. Third, stock mispricing per dollar of abnormal accrual is decreasing in analyst following for sufficiently large abnormal accruals in U.S. and global firms.

The purpose of this study was to investigate what impact the working capital policies have on the stock performance on the Swedish stock market during the years 2009-2012. Furthermore, the study explores if the firm size or industry of the firms have any impact on the working capital policy and if the theory of risk/return tradeoff indicating that an aggressive policy should generate a higher risk premium holds. This topic is rather unexplored since earlier studies have focused on working capital policies relationship with accounting profit rather than with stock return.In order to come up with answers to the research questions a quantitative research method has been used and data has been collected from the companies listed on the Swedish stock exchanges annual reports and stock prices from the Thomson Reuters Datastream. A database with all numbers and calculations was then constructed in Excel in order to easily transform the numbers into SPSS where the statistical tests where done. As statistical test the Pearson’s correlation was used to find if there is and correlation between working capital and stock return, beta and standard deviation. These tests where then done again but with the companies divided into policies, firm size and sectors.The results of this study show no clear relationship between Swedish firm’s working capital policy and the stock return. Regarding the relation with risk and return, the result indicates that working capital has a significant correlation with risk and that the aggressive policy of managing working capital is more risky. Moreover the size of firms does neither affect the relationship between working capital policies and stock return nor the risk/ return tradeoff. However, when dividing the sample into sectors especially one industry resulted in some standout findings. The industrial sector had significant correlations between level of working capital and risk/return. Concluding, there is no significant relationship between stock performance and working capital policies but after conducting this research we still regard working capital as one important component to take into account both for managers and investors.

This paper examines the efficiency of the Swedish stock market, by testing if it is possible to create an excess return by the use of technical trading rules. According to the efficient market hypothesis and the random walk theory, in an efficient market it is not possible to predict the future stock prices by analyzing historical stock prices. The profitability of tech-nical analysis and technical trading rules has been researched and debated extensively, but economists have yet to reach a consensus. Because of this we find it useful to continue to study technical trading rules, and in our case we will focus exclusively on the Swedish stock market. We have done this by applying the trading technique moving average on the Swe-dish stock exchange. We have used the OMX Stockholm 30 Index, OMXS30, the 30 most traded stocks on the Stockholm stock exchange. From Nasdaq OMX we have obtained the daily closing prices from 1986-09-30 - 2012-01-27. Our test shows support for technical trading rules. The best performing moving average is the (1,50,0), which substantially beats the buy-and-hold strategy while being statistically confident to 99%. We have also tested our data set for a unit root, if a unit root exists it implies that the data set is following a random walk. We cannot reject that there is a unit root with α = 0.10 in our data set, alt-hough it would be rejected with α = 0.11. Our result forces us to reject that the Swedish stock market is efficient which is consistent with previous research made one the Swedish stock market.

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Taking advantage of proxy variable of stock price manipulation like ownership concentration and earning management to examine the price difference between two market. In addition to liquidity or demand elasticity,etc, using manipulate variable of premium market(A-shares compared to H-share,TDR compared to HK-share) to investigate if manipulation can explain stock price difference. Empricial results show that premium not only concern to market system, but also connect to manipulation factors.The degree of premium will decrease as time progressd.