This study applies a housing market perspective on hotspots in northern, rural Sweden. It uses the concept ‘hotspot’ defined as places with rising house prices and in-migration of households with higher than average education and income. The focus rests on three places having the ideal characteristics of being a rural hotspot, located in three Swedish northern municipalities. These places are explored through ten interviews with ‘footloose’ households. The aim is to explore factors that shape rural housing market hotspots using stories from hotspot population households. The first reason for this study is that regional planning requests understanding to develop different regions and places for the future. Here the origins of hotspots are explored to understand the spread and sustainability of such developments. Second, housing markets in the countryside are more scantily investigated than in urban areas. In the unbalanced housing market with higher prices and limited supply in the urban areas hotspots in rural areas are not following traditional housing market theories, they are rather anomalies. Interviews with a specific footloose group of recent hotspot in-migrants are used in combination with knowledge about the housing market. Results show that although hotspots are locations with beautiful nature most households moved there because of finding jobs. The three areas have the ‘extra’ nature values and high status required for being a hotspot and a location for commuting to larger labor markets. The ‘footloose’ non-return migrants did find nice, cheaper housing that made them chose the area despite being strangers to the place. I suggest hotspots are the rare combination of footloose migrants and special places which make them difficult to develop elsewhere. / På jakt efter hotspots. Den svenska landsbygdens ojämna urbanisering" Lena Magnusson Turner (principal applicant) and Eva Andersson Formas – for the period 2009–2010

The experiences of past efforts of industrial pollution control while maintaining competitiveness should be of great value to research and policy practice addressing sustainability issues today. In this article, we analyze the environmental adaptation of the Swedish pulp industry during the period 1970–1990 as illustrated by the sulfite pulp producer Domsjö mill. We investigate how this company managed to adapt to heavy transformation pressure from increasing international competition in combination with strict national environmental regulations during the 1960s to the early 1990s. In line with the so-called Porter hypothesis, the company was able to coordinate the problems that were environmental in nature with activities aiming at production efficiency goals and the development of new products. Swedish environmental agencies and legislation facilitated this ―win-win‖ situation by a flexible but still challenging regulatory approach towards the company. From the early 1990s and onwards, the greening of the pulp industry was also a result of increased market pressure for green paper products.

Much progress has been made recently in developing the business model concept. However, one issue remains poorly understood, despite its importance for managers, policy makers, and academics alike, namely, how companies change and develop their business models to achieve sustained value creation. Companies which manage to create value over extended periods of time successfully shape, adapt and renew their business models to fuel such value creation. Drawing on findings from a research program on continuously growing firms, this paper identifies three critical capabilities, namely an orientation towards experimenting with and exploiting new business opportunities; a balanced use of resources; as well as achieving coherence between leadership, culture, and employee commitment, together shaping key strategizing actions. Moreover, we illustrate how each of these capabilities is supported by different sets of specific activities. Jointly, these three capabilities, their activities and the strategizing actions act as complementarities for value creation. We conclude the paper by suggesting implications for research and practitioners, providing a tool for managers which allows them to reflect on and identify critical issues relevant for changing and developing their business model to sustain value creation.

Tourism has reached almost all regions of the world and has had a notable growth in the peripheral regions of Europe. Attempts at tourism development in rural and peripheral areas have resulted in widely varying outcomes and have often been undertaken as a last resort by communities. Despite mixed results, tourism persists as a tool for regional development. There has not been so much research on the evolving nature of tourism entrepreneurship in regions where tourism is relatively new as a commercial/entrepreneurial activity, e.g., the rural and peripheral north of Europe. This thesis presents Northern Sweden as a regional case study but it is reasonable to assume that the research results are transferable to similar regions with a similar range of nature-based tourism in small communities.   The results show that tourism stakeholders co-evolve over time even though formal networks are loose and project-based (Article 1). Tourism firm survival improves for entrepreneurs with previous related experience but there is not necessarily an outsider advantage and new tourism firms contribute to job creation despite high rates of attrition (Article II). Protected areas with unique attributes (e.g., Laponia) can attract distant entrepreneurs but must manage these stakeholders more proactively (Article III). Climate change is a long-term challenge with firms not needing to adapt yet but facing differing exposures dependent on location and firm mobility (Article IV). Finally, evolutionary economic geography helps to better understand the processes of change in tourism in rural and peripheral areas (Article V).

The aim of the study was to see if any relationship between government spending andunemployment could be empirically found. To test if government spending affectsunemployment, a statistical model was applied on data from Sweden. The data was quarterlydata from the year 1994 until 2012, unit-root test were conducted and the variables wheretransformed to its first-difference so ensure stationarity. This transformation changed thevariables to growth rates. This meant that the interpretation deviated a little from the originalgoal. Other studies reviewed indicate that when government spending increases and/or taxesdecreases output increases. Studies show that unemployment decreases when governmentspending/GDP ratio increases. Some studies also indicated that with an already largegovernment sector increasing the spending it could have negative effect on output. The modelwas a VAR-model with unemployment, output, interest rate, taxes and government spending.Also included in the model were a linear and three quarterly dummies. The model used 7lags. The result was not statistically significant for most lags but indicated that as governmentspending growth rate increases holding everything else constant unemployment growth rateincreases. The result for taxes was even less statistically significant and indicates norelationship with unemployment. Post-estimation test indicates that there were problems withnon-normality in the model. So the results should be interpreted with some scepticism.

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Introduction: Swedish furniture companies have been quite successful in many parts of the world recently, with IKEA being a famous example of that. Meanwhile, Vietnam has one of the fastest-growing economies in South East Asia. However, there has not been any Swedish furniture company established on the Vietnamese market so far. Therefore, it would be useful to see if the Vietnamese furniture consumers would appreciate Swedish furniture, in order to analyze whether Swedish furniture companies could have success in Vietnam as well. Purpose: To study (1) How Vietnamese furniture consumers perceive the typical product values of Swedish furniture and (2) Analyze the potential for establishing Swedish furniture companies on the Vietnamese market. Methodology: Interviews, survey and secondary data. Findings and Analysis: The findings show that Vietnamese furniture consumers would generally appreciate Swedish furniture product values. Although the consumers do not recognize Sweden or Scandinavia as a furniture country or region, their preferences shown in furniture characteristics imply a increasingly positive attitude towards typical Swedish furniture product values. Conclusion and Recommendations: Due to the appreciation of Swedish typical product values, the potential for establishing Swedish furniture companies could be regarded as considerable in terms of product values. It is thus recommended that Swedish furniture companies carry on with creating typical Swedish product values when they enter the Vietnamese market. Index words: Sweden, Vietnam, Furniture, Product Values, Consumer Perception

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.

The credit rating industry is a global industry with only three major actors, Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings. The “big three” control the majority of the credit rating market and have powers, in the form of credit rating issuances, which they use to influence financial markets worldwide. Ever since their involvement in the fall of corporate giants in early 2000 and the financial crisis of 2008, the power and influence of the credit rating agencies, as well as questions regarding conflict of interest and transparency, have been a hot topic of debate.   The impact of credit ratings can be seen across multiple markets; however the focus of this study is on the stock market where every day investors can be affected. As Moody’s is one of the three largest CRAs in the world and is present worldwide, we apply their credit ratings when investigating the impact. Due to different characteristics of large and small markets, and since the US market is well studied; this study is conducted on the Swedish market. Thus, the aim of our study is to investigate the impact credit ratings from Moody’s have on the Swedish stock market and also, give a perspective on how the financial crisis of 2008 influences the potential impact.   We apply an event study method to isolate the events and measure the abnormal returns. To estimate the expected market return we use the market model on estimation periods of 60 to 120 days. The sample contains 71 individual credit rating changes from 17 firms listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and considers all uncontaminated credit rating changes issued by Moody’s on the Swedish market during the time period of 1990 to 2012.   Empirical evidence showed that the Swedish stock market is susceptible to Moody’s negative credit ratings but almost unaffected by the positive credit ratings. These findings are in line with previous research of Holthausen & Leftwich (1986) amongst others. Still, the effects discovered were not prolonged and no clear difference in impact was found after 2008.

This Master‟s thesis is the result of research conducted through field-work which has taken place in Sweden, and additionally text analysis. The aim of this study is to explore the specific case of the Colombian diaspora in Sweden, to discover the reactions, possible involvements, and motivations for involvements and/or un-involvements in relation to their homelands currently ongoing peace negotiation process. This study first seeks to understand the overall reaction and attitudes of the Colombian diaspora members in Sweden towards the peace negotiations, and then looks to provide an understanding over possible influences being exerted from the Colombian diaspora members, and why or why not there is an exert of influence/involvement. The overall understanding of how the Colombian diaspora members in Sweden react to the peace process, are involved/un-involved, and their motivations behind what they do has been discovered through the field-work conducted in this study. This field-work was conducted solely in Sweden, as to provide the specific case of the Colombian diaspora member in Sweden, through qualitative methods and has used semi-structured interviews as well as questionnaires in English and Spanish to collect the information needed to answer the aim of the research presented in this study. Through the field-work, this study has discovered strong hesitations on the Colombian diaspora member behalves to not only be involved in any form of economic, social and political means of influence towards the peace process, but to also take part in this study. The concerns presented by the Colombian diaspora members towards involvements and/or un-involvements are those of political interests, hesitations from the strong bi-polarity of the Colombian society, as well as personal security. Overall, this study has discovered that there is more support from the Colombian diaspora members in Sweden for the ongoing peace negotiations than non-support, but that very few involvements are exerted by this small population of Colombian diaspora members in Sweden.