The recent period of intensified electricity price volatility has challenged both private households and businesses, resulting in companies transitioning their strategies to address the uncertainties that follow. No previous study has analysed how electricity price volatility affects Swedish industries’ returns and electricity usage. Therefore, this essay aims to fill this knowledge gap and capture the impact of electricity price volatility on two different industries, one more electricity-intensive industry and one less electricity-intensive industry. By applying a DCC-GARCH model, the study examines the impact on the returns and electricity usage of two industries to analyse if electricity price volatility has affected businesses in terms of returns and electricity consumption.  The first DCC model was run on weekly electricity spot price data from Nord Pool and data constructed through a proxy of each industry’s average return. The results show that there is almost zero conditional correlation over time, ranging from 0.03 to 0.045, between the electricity price and each industry’s returns. There are no short-run spillover effects from electricity price volatility on the on the industries’ average returns. On the other hand, there is a long term spillover effect from electricity prices to the more electricity-intensive industry and no long term spillover for the less electricity-intensive industry.  The second DCC-GARCH modell is applied on monthly electricity spot prices from Nord Pool and data of monthly electricity usage of each industry. The industries are sorted by Swedish Standard Industrial Classification (SNI). SNI 17 stands for manufacture of paper and paper products and SNI 24 stands for manufacture of basic metals. The results from this part indicates that the dynamic conditional correlation between electricity price and the electricity usage in the paper industry is close to zero which differ from the basic metal industry which is positive. Beyond the dynamic conditional correlation, we find a short-term spillover effect from electricity price volatility to electricity usage in the basic metal industry, which is absent in the paper industry. On the other hand, there is a long-term spillover effect from electricity price volatility to electricity usage in the paper industry, which is absent for the electricity usage in basic metal industry.  Overall, our study shows that the businesses in the return proxy have preformed relatively well despite an uncertain period of volatile electricity prices. Simultaneously we find that the results for the industries electricity usage differ between the chosen industries.

This research focuses on the measurement of the non-observed economic activities by sector of South Africa for the 2011 and 2016 calendar years. The purpose of the research is to determine whether the current GDP as estimated by Statistics South Africa is under- or overestimated when considering the non-observed economy. The research is based on the 2008 System of National Accounts as it determines the guidelines, definitions and characteristics of the “Non-observed economy (NOE)” sector and it allows national accountants to use/supplement the research in the estimates of the GDP. This research follows a quantitative methodology where several surveys of Statistics South Africa are used. Where lack of data exists, some administrative data is used regarding the illegal activities. The findings of the research is that the total economy of South Africa is underestimated when taking into account the NOE activities. / Economics / M. Com. (Economics)