Many economists and politicians have blamed fixed exchange rate regimes for several crises taking place in developing countries after the 1980s. According to them, since the beginning of the 2000s, widespread implementation of flexible exchange rate regimes and high international reserves have prevented developing countries from experiencing similar catastrophic experiences. This interpretation seems to be misleading. We believe that even flexible exchange rate regimes with high international reserves do not have a magic to prevent a financial crisis. Although flexible exchange rate regimes and high international reserves might have played some positive roles in the relatively calm period of 2001-2008 / the main reason behind the calmness of this period is the fact that developing countries did not face a strong financial shock during this period. In the presence of &ldquo / safe havens&rdquo / , which implies existence of safe developed countries for financial capital to move into, flexible exchange rate regimes and the accumulated large reserves may not be adequate when a wave of financial shocks, as in the form of sudden stops and capital reversals, hit developing countries. Indeed, the absence of safe heavens and very low yields in developed countries eased the pressure on developing countries during the recent financial crisis of 2008-2009. If developed economies get their safe haven status back, developing countries might face new financial shocks. In this sense developing countries would experience new financial crises in this new period. We will elaborate on the possible conditions of these prospective financial crises in this thesis.

In this thesis work fluid flow and heat transfer in two-dimensional microchannels are studied numerically. A computer code based on Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) is developed for this purpose. The code is written using MATLAB and Jacket software and has the important feature of being able to run parallel on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). The code is used to simulate flow and heat transfer inside micro and macro channels. Obtained velocity profiles and Nusselt numbers are compared with the Navier-Stokes based analytical and numerical results available in the literature and good matches are observed. Slip velocity and temperature jump boundary conditions are used for the micro channel simulations with Knudsen number values covering the slip flow regime. Speed of the parallel version of the developed code running on GPUs is compared with that of the serial one running on CPU and for large enough meshes more than 14 times speedup is observed.

Takeovers have become a frequent feature of business. Due to their frequency and size, they have potentially considerable implications for the companies involved and their stakeholders.This thesis focuses on valuation problems in relation to takeovers. It comprises an empirical study of a number of Swedish corporate acquisitions, and a comprehensive survey of previous research on the outcome of takeovers.In the empirical study, the capital budgeting approach serves as the frame of reference for valuation. The cash flow consequences of seven takeovers are studied over a maximum period of five postmerger years. Special attention is given to the characteristics of incremental cash flows, the prospect of separating them from cash flows arising from other decisions taken by the merging companies, and the temporal relation between incremental cash flows and incremental accounting income.The comprehensive survey consists of a thorough description of previous research attempting to answer the questions: ‘Are corporate acquisitions successful?’ and ‘Which takeovers are successful and which are failures?’. While the main focus is on studies using financial accounting data, studies relying on stock market and interview data are also discussed.This thesis carries implications for the way takeovers are evaluated and accounted for, and contributes to the existing body of knowledge regarding the outcome of corporate acquisitions. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if the trade flows within the European Union are affected by the environmental policies within the union. An environmental sensitivity index (IESP) is used as explanatory variable, with export and import shares respectively as dependent variables. The trade flow data is collected from the OECD database for the years 1995 to 1998, and is used in a regression analysis together with IESP data from the same years. The analysis covers 15 European Union member countries. The result from the regression analysis shows a positive relationship between IESP and trade flows. However, our values did not turn out to be significant, much due to the low number of observations and too few explanatory variables. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om handelsflödena inom den Europeiska Unionen påverkas av miljöpolitiken inom unionen. Ett index som mäter miljökänslighet (IESP) används som förklarande variabel, med export respektive import som beroende variabler. Data om handelsflöden är hämtade från OECDs databas och täcker åren 1995-1998. Dessa data används i en regressionsanalys tillsammans med IESP data från samma period. Analysen täcker 15 medlemsländer från den Europeiska Unionen. Resultaten från regressionsanalysen pekar på ett positivt samband mellan handelsflöden och IESP. Tyvärr blev våra värden ej signifikanta, mycket beroende på för få observationer och förklarande variabler.

Ein neues, verallgemeinertes Modell für Blasenkoaleszenz und –zerfall wurde entwickelt. Es basiert auf physikalischen Überlegungen und berücksichtigt verschiedene Mechanismen, die zu Blasenkoaleszenz und –zerfall führen können. In einer ausführlichen Literaturrecherche wurden zunächst die verfügbaren Modelle zusammengestellt und analysiert. Es zeigte sich, dass viele widersprüchliche Modelle veröffentlicht wurden. Keins dieser Modelle erlaubt die Vorhersage der Entwicklung der Blasengrößenverteilungen entlang einer Rohrströmung für einen breiten Bereich an Kombinationen von Volumenströmen der Gas- und der Flüssigphase. Das neue Modell wurde ausführlich in einem vereinfachten Testsolver untersucht. Dieser erfasst zwar nicht alle Einzelheiten einer sich entlang des Rohres entwickelten Strömungen, erlaubt aber im Gegensatz zu den CFD-Simulationen eine Vielzahl von Variationsrechnungen zur Untersuchung des Einflusses einzelner Größen und Modelle. Koaleszenz und Zerfall kann nicht getrennt von anderen Phänomenen und Modellen, die diese widerspiegeln, betrachtet werden. Es bestehen enge Wechselwirkungen mit der Turbulenz der Flüssigphase und dem Impulsaustausch zwischen den Phasen. Da die Dissipationsrate der turbulenten kinetischen Energie ein direkter Eingangsparameter für das neue Modell ist, wurde die Turbulenzmodellierung besonders genau untersucht. Zur Validierung des Modells wurde eine TOPFLOW-Experimentalserie zur Luft-Wasser-Strömungen in einem 8 m langen DN200-Rohr genutzt. Die Daten zeichnen sich durch eine hohe Qualität aus und wurden im Rahmen des TOPFLOW-IIVorhabens mit dem Ziel eine Grundlage für die hier vorgestellten Arbeiten zu liefern, gewonnen. Die Vorhersage der Entwicklung der Blasengrößenverteilung entlang des Rohrs konnte im Vergleich zu den bisherigen Standardmodellen für Blasenkoaleszenz und -zerfall in CFX deutlich verbessert werden. Einige quantitative Abweichungen bleiben aber bestehen. Die vollständigen Modellgleichungen sowie eine Implementierung über „User-FORTRAN“ in CFX stehen zur Verfügung und können für weitere Arbeiten zur Simulation polydisperser Blasenströmungen genutzt werden.

Interindustry transactions recorded at a macro level are simply summations of commodity shipment decisions taken at a micro level. The resulting statistical problem is to obtain minimally biased estimates of commodity flow distributions at the disaggregated level, given various forms of aggregated information. This study demonstrates the application of the entropy-maximizing paradigm in its traditional form, together with recent adaptations emerging from information theory, to the area of spatial and non-spatial input-output analysis. A clear distinction between the behavioural and statistical aspects of entropy modelling is suggested. The discussion of non-spatial input-output analysis emphasizes the rectangular and dynamic extensions of Leontief's original model, and also outlines a scheme for simple aggregation, based on a criterion of minimum loss of information. In the chapters on spatial analysis, three complementary approaches to the estimation of interregional flows are proposed. Since the static formulations cannot provide an accurate picture of the gross interregional flows between any two sectors, Leontief's dynamic framework is adapted to the problem. The study concludes by describing a hierarchical system of models to analyse feasible paths of economic development over space and time. / digitalisering@umu

Many problems in fluid mechanics and material sciences deal with liquid-vapour flows. In these flows, the ideal gas assumption is not accurate and the van der Waals equation of state is usually used. This equation of state is non-convex and causes the solution domain to have two hyperbolic regions separated by an elliptic region. Therefore, the governing equations of these flows have a mixed elliptic-hyperbolic nature. Numerical oscillations usually appear with standard finite-difference space discretization schemes, and they persist when the order of accuracy of the semi-discrete scheme is increased. In this study, we propose to use a Chebyshev pseudospectral method for solving the governing equations. A comparison of the results of this method with very high-order (up to tenth-order accurate) finite difference schemes is presented, which shows that the proposed method leads to a lower level of numerical oscillations than other high-order finite difference schemes, and also does not exhibit fast-traveling packages of short waves which are usually observed in high-order finite difference methods. The proposed method can thus successfully capture various complex regimes of waves and phase transitions in both elliptic and hyperbolic regimes

This thesis presents an axisymmetric numerical model to simulate interfacial flows near a sharp corner, where contact line pinning occurs. The method has been used to analyze drop imbibition into a capillary. To evaluate the performance of the numerical method, for a liquid drop initially placed partially within a capillary, a thermodynamic model has also been developed, to predict equilibrium states. The first part of this thesis presents an axisymmetric VoF algorithm to simulate interfacial flows near a sharp corner. (1) A new method to exactly calculate the normals and curvatures of any circle with a radius as small as the grid size is presented. This method is a hybrid least squares height function technique which fits a discretized osculating circle to a curve, from which interface normals and curvature can be evaluated. (2) A novel technique for applying the contact angle boundary condition has been devised, based on the definition of an osculating circle near a solid phase. (3) A new flux volume construction technique is presented, which can be applied to any split advection scheme. Unlike the traditional approach where the flux volumes are assumed rectangular, the new flux volumes can be either trapezoidal or triangular. The new technique improves the accuracy and consistency of the advection scheme. (4) Explicit PLIC reconstruction expressions for axisymmetric coordinates have been derived. (5) Finally, a numerical treatment of VoF for contact line motion near a sharp corner is presented, base on the idea of contact line pinning and an edge contact angle. The second part of the thesis is on the imbibition of a drop into an open capillary. A thermodynamic analysis based on minimization of an interfacial surface energy function is presented to predict equilibrium configurations of drops. Based on the drop size compared to the hole size, the equilibrium contact angle, and the geometry of the capillary, the drop can be totally imbibed by the capillary, or may not wet the capillary at all. The thesis concludes with application of the numerical scheme to the same problem, to examine the dynamics of wetting or dewetting of a capillary. All of the simulations yield results that correspond to the equilibrium states predicted by the thermodynamic analysis, but offer additional insight on contact line motion and interface deformation near the capillary edge.

Gradient flows of energy functionals on the space of probability measures with Wasserstein metric has proved to be a strong tool in studying certain mass conserving evolution equations. Such gradient flows provide an alternate formulation for the solutions of the corresponding evolution equations. An important condition, which is known to guarantees existence, uniqueness, and continuous dependence on initial data is that the corresponding energy functional be displacement convex. We introduce a relaxed notion of displacement convexity and we show that it still guarantees short time existence and uniqueness of Wasserstein gradient flows for higher order energy functionals which are not displacement convex in the standard sense. This extends the applicability of the gradient flow approach to larger family of energies. As an application, local and global well-posedness of different higher order non-linear evolution equations are derived. Examples include the thin-film equation and the quantum drift diffusion equation in one spatial variable.

This thesis presents an axisymmetric numerical model to simulate interfacial flows near a sharp corner, where contact line pinning occurs. The method has been used to analyze drop imbibition into a capillary. To evaluate the performance of the numerical method, for a liquid drop initially placed partially within a capillary, a thermodynamic model has also been developed, to predict equilibrium states. The first part of this thesis presents an axisymmetric VoF algorithm to simulate interfacial flows near a sharp corner. (1) A new method to exactly calculate the normals and curvatures of any circle with a radius as small as the grid size is presented. This method is a hybrid least squares height function technique which fits a discretized osculating circle to a curve, from which interface normals and curvature can be evaluated. (2) A novel technique for applying the contact angle boundary condition has been devised, based on the definition of an osculating circle near a solid phase. (3) A new flux volume construction technique is presented, which can be applied to any split advection scheme. Unlike the traditional approach where the flux volumes are assumed rectangular, the new flux volumes can be either trapezoidal or triangular. The new technique improves the accuracy and consistency of the advection scheme. (4) Explicit PLIC reconstruction expressions for axisymmetric coordinates have been derived. (5) Finally, a numerical treatment of VoF for contact line motion near a sharp corner is presented, base on the idea of contact line pinning and an edge contact angle. The second part of the thesis is on the imbibition of a drop into an open capillary. A thermodynamic analysis based on minimization of an interfacial surface energy function is presented to predict equilibrium configurations of drops. Based on the drop size compared to the hole size, the equilibrium contact angle, and the geometry of the capillary, the drop can be totally imbibed by the capillary, or may not wet the capillary at all. The thesis concludes with application of the numerical scheme to the same problem, to examine the dynamics of wetting or dewetting of a capillary. All of the simulations yield results that correspond to the equilibrium states predicted by the thermodynamic analysis, but offer additional insight on contact line motion and interface deformation near the capillary edge.