The purpose of this research is studying and analyzing immigrant’s perception of their integration into the labor market in Sweden. It is qualitative study and the data consist from six in-depth interviews with immigrants who live in Östersund, Sweden and arrived to Sweden at least one year ago. The theoretical starting point of the thematic analysis of the collected data is following concepts: social integration and social segregation, discrimination (statistical, preference, ethnical, racial, religious), cultural distance, self-confidence and self-perception, human capital and social capital.The results have shown that the majority of the immigrants perceive themselves as segregated from the Swedish labor market due to the unemployment, discrimination towards them, cultural differences between them and Swedes, the unadjustment to the Swedish society, and the exclusion from the Swedish social network. However, the employment was not considered by all interviewed immigrants as a prerequisite for the integration into the job market in Sweden. Such country-specific skills as Swedish education and Swedish work experience were identified by the interviewed immigrants as important factors for their acceptance by the Swedish employers.

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Recently, the meat supply chain has undergone a number of structural changes including increased concentration and a greater degree of quasi-vertical integration coordinated through contract procurement. The effects these changes have had on the meat supply chain, arranged as a complex array of producers, processors, distributors, and retailers, are not yet known. This study investigates the motives for, and consequences of, recent changes in the meat supply chain. The first essay examines causality among variables in the U.S. cattle supply chain using temporal and contemporaneous causality methodologies. Tests for structural changes reveal a likely structural change between later 1996 and early 1997 that was likely induced by the turnaround of the U.S. cattle inventory accompanied with severe droughts in Midwest. Results suggest that overall temporal causalities in the U.S. cattle supply chain become weaker after the structural change, though relatively strong causalities are found in pre-break periods. In contrast, strong contemporaneous causal relationships are founded in post-break periods. One conclusion is that recent structural changes in the industry are resulting in more rapid transmission of information through the supply chain. Causal evidence also suggests that the direction of information transmission has changed in recent times from moving generally downstream to moving generally upstream. This might be the result of increased concentration at the packer and retail levels giving rise to increased ability to “set” prices. The second essay develops a theoretical model to investigate the dynamic effects of the contract procurement on packer competition in the spot market with general contract pricing scheme. Results indicate that packers have an incentive to consider the effects of spot market purchases on contract procurement even after accounting for hedonic characteristics of live cattle and risk aversion in cattle feeding operations. The third essay investigates the impacts of domestic and overseas animal disease outbreaks on the Korean meat supply chain. Market impacts are investigated using both forecasts and historical decomposition of price innovations based on an error correction model (ECM) of the Korean meat sector. Results indicate that while the affected markets suffered significantly from the outbreaks, the impacts seem temporary and substitute meat markets benefited significantly.

Farmers' markets in the United States have experienced a dramatic increase since the 1970's. In the past three decades the number of farmers' markets has increased from 340 in 1970 to 3,617 by 2006. This interest in farmers' markets has not been felt everywhere, though. The purpose of this study was to investigate the supply and demand sides of farmers' markets, farmers and customers, in order to increase both segments at farmers' markets in Bryan and College Station, Texas. Interviews were conducted with farmers within a 100-mile radius of the two towns, to determine characteristics of potential farmers' market vendors and factors influencing market outlet choice. Bryan and College Station residents were surveyed at different market outlets to establish their knowledge of and interest in farmers' markets. The two primary themes found for farmers' reasons for growing were family and enjoyment, with enjoyment an especially important theme among older growers. Factors influencing market outlet choice were farmer status (part-time or full-time) and volume grown, with time, volume and risk being the primary considerations for most of the younger farmers interviewed. Almost 90% of respondents said they had been to one of the local farmers' markets, but this could be attributed to many of the respondents' misperception of a farmers' market. Farmers' markets will need to increase residents' understandings of what a farmers' market is. The best communication channel to reach residents appears to be the newspaper as 35% of respondents said that is where they get their local news. The primary reason for not attending farmers' markets was inconvenient times. Those that chose inconvenient times as a reason for not attending preferred Saturday afternoons.

A central result in price theory is the law of one price: prices of a homogeneous good sold at different locations should be equal. Empirical studies of the law of one price find that it is often violated. In my dissertation I explore the allocation problem that suppliers face when supplying multiple markets. I use the experimental method to examine the effect of an increase in the number of suppliers in a market, ceteris paribus, has on the allocation decisions of market participants. I also use the experimental method to investigate suppliers that are strategic and show that market concentration and transportation costs restrict the supplier’s ability to coordinate on an efficient equilibrium. A strategic supplier takes account his own effect on prices. Strategic supplies face a difficult strategy coordination problem. If they cannot solve it, then an inefficient outcome may result. Coordination failure may result in price dispersion across the markets. Resulting price signals do not inform suppliers who should respond and by how much. Price signals are not sufficient for suppliers to solve the strategy coordination problem. In the experiments, I observe that increasing the quantity of suppliers, that is the Herfindahl index of concentration, in the market will decrease the frequency of the equilibrium strategy to be played, holding other things constant. Increasing the number of firms in a market, ceteris paribus, increases price dispersion and coordination on an efficient market allocation is decreased. The experiments reveal that the ability of suppliers to coordinate is directly correlated with the optimization premium: the expected payoff difference between best responding to an opponents strategy and the payoff to an inferior response. The incentive is greater to best respond when the optimization premium is larger. Coordination at the equilibrium allocation is quicker.

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In this paper, we investigate the information content of the insider trading. We use book to market ratio to judge the stock price of the firms which tend to be overvalued or undervalued. We suppose that the higher the book to market ratio is, the more the insider buy; vice versa. According to the past papers, seasoning equity offering often happens when the stock price is overvalued. On the other hand, the stock repurchase often happens when the stock price is undervalued. As a result, we propose that if the seasoning equity offering happens, the insiders will sell more holding stocks. If the stock repurchase happens, the insiders will buy more holding stocks. Besides, we try to understand if we can use the insider trading and the book to market ratio to be the signal of seasoning equity offerings or stock repurchase. These empirical results are not the same as our hypotheses because of the specific reason¡Xmost of the corporations in the sample are operated by family. Therefore, they won¡¦t sell their stocks easily. We have to understand the real trading motivation in the subsequences study.

Mortgage insurance (MI), is the insurance which a insurer guarantees that it will pay a certain portion of top tier mortgage loss to financial institution (insured) when the debtor defaults. Because the insurer shares the decreasing risk of collateral value, the bank is willing to lend homebuyer more money. The homebuyer can use low down payment (3%-10% in American) to buy a house so that he can shorten the waiting time of saving enough down payment. By this mechanism, the homebuyer, financial institution and house market all can benefit. Besides, mortgage insurance has the credit enhancement function in second mortgage market, and it helps the real estate securitization. The goal of this thesis is to introduce the mechanism of mortgage insurance in American and to analyze how it works in Taiwan. After estimating the need in Taiwan, I present some suggestions and I hope that mortgage insurance is available in Taiwan as soon as possible so that young people and earthquake 921 sufferers can make their owing house dream come true earlier.

Abstract As the result of the free economic booming in the past years, th international trade relations have became more closed and intense. Especially, the globlization and WTO make most of the industries become more competitive. Each government takes reformation at the industry movement¡Bprivatization or free economy policy to achieve the cost down and efficiency in order to obtain international marketing advantage .for example,the British government was the first one todeploy privatizatiopn of electricity market Since 1980 .Its successful is the pattern of American¡AAustrian¡Anorth Europe and Asia countries. The electricity market is monopolized by the governent-own Taiwan Power Company for more than 50 years.It has the traditional bussinesss including the power generation¡Bthe transmission ¡Bthe distribution and the sales ,which made excellent contribution to this country. After 1980s¡Awith global economic booming¡A the electricity power demanding is gradually impeded by green party and public that corncern the impact to the environment verywhere on this island. Consequently ,without the sufficient power supply ,the electricity power shortage was quite often since then.In order to facilitate the efficient management and increase the capacity of the power the government ordered the Department of Economy of ROC to accomplish the de-regulation and privatization of the electricity market.By induced the capital with management skill from local private company¡Athe goal has been achieved with significant progresses.and more competitors.Three stages bid increased 9000 mw of power at final¡Ait nearly 25¢Mof total market, four privates power company was synconization already since 1998. Generally speaking ,the power deregulation policy is successful and has been gradually move to its target. The beginning of this paper is to probe the difficulties that the private-owned company ,though the planning, to the final achievement. By collecting and investigating all the related materials, this paper discusses and reviews the drawback and results of the power deregulation policy. And the main topics are to provide the advise and create new vision for the undergoing deregultion plan ,including the analysis and review of the privatization policy ,the location decision of new power plans the planning and design for the power distribution ,ande marketing of the electricity. The private power companies could use the final conclusionas the advice or references in their future plans

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