<p>Recent studies claims that Sweden has the lowest returns on education compared to other OECD countries. Other research made in the subject tend to focus on the gains from education, but forget to calculate the costs, both direct cost such as material, accommodation and food, but also opportunity costs from not working instead of investing in education.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to study if an investment in an education is an effective way of monetary utility maximizing in Sweden, in other words income. This thesis will investigate whether education will be a profitable investment, and if so how many years of employment it will take an individual to gain from that investment.</p><p>The Human Capital theory is the theoretical framework of this thesis and the result is in Swedish Crowns. This research quantifies that an education is an effective way to income maximizing and men’s payback time in monetary terms are more likely to be shorter than female’s.</p>

The landscape of cancer care is evolving and as a result nursing care continues to develop and respond to the changing needs of oncology patients and their families. There is a paucity of qualitative research examining the experience of being an oncology nurse on an inpatient unit. Therefore, a qualitative study using an interpretive phenomenological approach has been undertaken to discover the lived experience of being an oncology nurse. In-depth tape recorded interviews has been conducted with six oncology nurses who worked on two adult inpatient oncology units. Van Manen’s (1990) interpretive phenomenological approach has been used to analyze the data by subjecting the transcripts to an analysis both line by line and as a whole. The overarching theme of the interviews is: Investing to Make a Difference. The themes that reflect this overarching theme are: Caring for the Whole Person, Being an Advocate, Walking a Fine Line, and Feeling Like You are Part of Something Good. Oncology nurses provide care for their patients through a holistic lens that further enhances how they come to know their patients. Over time, relationships with patients and families develop and these nurses share that balancing the emotional aspects of their work is key in being able to continue to invest in their work and in these relationships. Their investment is further evident as oncology nurses continuously update their knowledge, for example, of treatment regimes, medication protocols, and as they champion their patients wishes and needs. As nurses develop their own identities as oncology nurses, they in turn enhance the team with their emerging skill and knowledge. These research findings serve to acknowledge the meaning of oncology nurses’ work and inform the profession’s understanding of what it means to be an oncology nurse.

This thesis explores the possible avenues available to corporations and capital-managing entities seeking to increase their commitment to good works. These organizations have the potential to fill the gap in societal needs by supporting and investing in good works, including environmental protection and highly-innovative energy technologies, beyond the traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR) norm. These means include charitable giving, working with disadvantaged communities, corporate assistance to environmental or other social non-governmental organizations, and more. This thesis discusses the advantages and limitations of various corporate structures (C Corporations, S Corporations, LLCs, B Corps, L3Cs, and benefit corporations) and capital-managing organizations (mutual funds, foundations, and pension funds). Recommendations are provided for each to encourage good works with greater impact.

This research sought to find local evidence within the Israeli context that corporate social responsibility can have positive impact on corporate financial performance, similar to research findings in leading western economies. Such local based evidence, if found, would encourage the inclusion of CSR as part of strategic management of companies in Israel. The investigation focused on a sample of leading companies in Israel, forming part of the TA-100 stock exchange index, and was undertaken between 2005 and 2006. The research used quantitative investigation of secondary data on financial performance that is available for companies traded on the stock exchange. It included social responsibility ranking undertaken by the association of 'Business for social responsibility in Israel' – MAALA. This data was used to compare financial performance between groups of companies with different levels of social responsibility. The research found that higher social responsibility for companies in Israel was associated with higher financial performance, in comparison to their counterpart companies ranked as lower in social responsibility. However at the extreme, a very high level of social responsibility is associated with decline in financial performance. The research conclusion was that companies in Israel face the same CSR-to-CFP relationship, as their counterparts in leading western economies. This provides the rationale for Israeli companies to incorporate social responsibility as part of their business strategy aimed at improving financial performance.

This study used protocol analysis to identify key variables in the venture capital investment decision-making process. The study used a fictional business plan which was based on six actual business plans. This fictional business plan was presented to ten venture capitalists who were asked to review it to decide whether to interview the investee. The protocols obtained from these subjects were analyzed to determine patterns within the subjects' review. The sections of the business plan which were commonly reviewed first were the deal structure, the executive summary, and the management section. The management section was used by the greatest number of subjects. The market section was used the greatest number of times. The data were also organized by type of operators used in each subject's protocols. Information Search/Retrieval operators were most common, followed by Task Structuring/Set Goal operators. When classified into the four major categories of Task Structuring/Set Goal, Information Acquisition, Analytical/ Inferential, and Choice operators, Analytical/Inferential operators were used most frequently. Choice operators were least used. The phrases were analyzed by the relevant section in the business plan. The market received the greatest number of references, followed by references to the product and to management. However, when references to the income statement and balance sheet were combined as phrases relevant to the financial statements, the financial statements were referred to more frequently than the product or the people. The subjects appeared to use an unidentified choice program within which certain models could be identified as subroutines. The subjects used an elimination-by-aspects model to screen the business plan. If the business plan met the criteria within the elimination-by-aspects model of the subject, the subject used an additive/nonlinear model for the remainder of the review. The results of this study indicate that financial statements provide information important in the venture capital investment decision-making process. This finding is contrary to the advice usually given to potential venture capital investees.

This masters thesis is based on study of technical analysis of financial markets, i.e. analysis of dependencies between past and present price data, especially when it comes to "supports" and "resistances" or historical price levels where price recently tended to stop and reverse. First of all, summary of the most relevant literature on technical analysis is presented, together with literature on psychology of investing, behavioral finance and market efficiency. Following that, theoretical arguments in favor of possible edge in trading of technical levels are introduced and possible objections are addressed. This theory - in the form of several thousands of unique but similar trading strategies - is then tested on historical data of the most important financial assets. Results are compared to those of conservative buy-and-hold strategy and random trading. We reached the conclusion that trading based on technical price levels brings positive capital gains which are better than those achieved by random trading and buy-and-hold strategy. Parameters of our strategies influence the results in expectable manner more often than not.

This thesis aims to apply methods of value investing into developing field of algorithmic trading. Firstly, we investigate the effect of several fundamental variables on stock returns using the fixed effects model and portfolio approach. The results confirm that size and book- to-market ratio explain some variation in stock returns that market alone do not capture. Moreover, we observe a significant positive effect of book-to-market ratio and negative effect of size on future stock returns. Secondly, we try to utilize those variables in a trading algorithm. Using the common performance evaluation tools we test several fundamentally based strategies and discover that investing into small stocks with high book-to-market ratio beats the market in the tested period between 2009 and 2015. Although we have to be careful with conclusions as our dataset has some limitations, we believe that there is a market anomaly in the testing period which may be caused by preference of technical strategies over value investing by market participants.

Islamic finance is rapidly gaining momentum around the world. Interpretations of Shari'ah, or Islamic law, state that investments must be free from elements of riba (interest), gharar (uncertainty), maysir (speculation) and haram (unethical) business activities. Islamic equity investing, therefore, utilizes a set of business activity screens and accounting-based screens to exclude firms considered non-permissible under Shari'ah. Despite increased academic interest, there is still much uncertainty surrounding the financial implications of these investment principles. This Ph.D. thesis, comprised of three empirical essays, aims to contribute to this debate. The first essay offers a comprehensive examination of Islamic equity index performance. The findings show that Islamic equity indices have exhibited abnormal returns on a global and developed market level, primarily due to their exclusion of stocks in the financial services sector. The second essay attempts to study the determinants of Islamic investments' financial performance, with a particular focus on the role of country-level factors. The third essay studies performance related issues associated with the accounting-based screening process. A significant proportion of these screens are documented to contribute positively to risk-adjusted performance, most notably in periods of financial market turmoil.

Impact investing is growing as a development approach to bring about positive social, environmental and economic impact for marginalized people in the developing world. But existing in a developed country like Canada, the Aboriginal communities are not getting enough attention due to lack of capacity, state dependency, state policies and negative perception among the stakeholders in the financial ecosystems. This thesis followed mixed methods participatory action research approach and had a deeper look on the present investment ecosystem and identified many barriers to investment for Aboriginal cooperative or social enterprise including negative stereotypes regarding Aboriginal communities impeding investing in cooperative or social enterprise. However, proper education, financial inclusion, awareness among stakeholders and engaging micro-investors in Aboriginal enterprises could improve the situation and develop opportunities for both the supply and demand side. / May 2016

This thesis discusses the options households have when it comes to investing in capital markets in the Czech Republic. The issue of investing and capital market options is analyzed. Following this analysis comes the description of financial instruments, their characteristics, and the usability of these instruments by small investors. On the basis of the theory presented, a study was conducted to examine the usage of individual financial products. The collected data was processed using modern software tools, which helped in drawing several conclusions, results, and recommendations for investors and financial instrument providers alike.