Level of Traffic Stress (LTS) is a four-level system that classifies the stress experienced by cyclists on road segments and at intersections. While LTS has been used in past studies to assess cycling connectivity, accessibility, and safety, very little is known concerning its influence on cycling preferences. This study investigates this topic using a dataset containing 323,163 unique GPS trajectories of Hamilton Bike Share (HBS) users collected over a 12-month period (January 1st to December 31st, 2019). A GIS-based map-matching algorithm is used to generate users’ routes from these trajectories along with attributes such as route length, number of intersections, and number of turns. Unique routes and their use frequencies are then extracted from all routes. The most popular routes between bike share hub (station) pairs are then identified as dominant routes while shortest distance routes are derived by minimizing distance traveled. Weighted level of traffic stress (WLTS), a novel measure of impedance (travel cost) developed for this study, is used to derive the least stressful routes between hub pairs. The three types of routes are compared statistically. The comparison finds that HBS users tend to choose longer routes with bicycle infrastructure in an effort to reduce their traffic stress. However, they do not choose to minimize traffic stress in its entirety by choosing the lowest WLTS routes. In other words, dominant routes are not the least stressful routes in a bike share system. Likewise, minimizing distance is not the sole consideration of HBS users. The findings suggest that other factors also influence route choice. This study not only enhances our understanding of cyclist route preferences with respect to LTS, it also presents a novel measure of impedance – WLTS – that could be used when planning new cycling infrastructure or as an alternative means to route cyclists between origins and destinations. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Efter den relativt stora nedgången på börsen, som skedde i februari 2020 till följd av Covid-19pandemin, hade börsen en mycket stark uppgång mellan mars 2020 och november 2021. Närinflationen ökade under 2021 började fler prognostisera att det framgent skulle komma räntehöjningar.Detta, i kombination med andra faktorer, som exempelvis Rysslands invasion av Ukraina i början av2022, ledde till att många investerare blev passiva och skeptiska till hur aktiemarknaden skulleutvecklas. Från november 2021 till november 2022 föll det breda Stockholmsindexet, OMXStockholm PI, med 22 procent. Fastighetsindex OMX Stockholm Real Estate PI, hade en betydligtstörre nedgång på 44 procent. Syftet med studien var att undersöka vilka fastighetsbolag vars aktiekurser hade störst avvikelse frånfastighetsindex under tidsperioden november 2021 till november 2022, och varför. Studien harbaserats på både en kvalitativ och kvantitativ undersökning. I den kvalitativa undersökningen har 6mycket relevanta personer intervjuats. Den kvantitativa delen består av en sektorjämförelse samtdjupgående analyser av de 10 fastighetsbolag som avvek mest från index under den valda perioden. Resultatet visar att samtliga fastighetsbolag hade en negativ utveckling i dess aktiekurser mellannovember 2021 och november 2022. En orsak varför fastighetsbolagen påverkats mer negativt, jämförtmed andra sektorer, är att fastighetsbolag generellt använder högre nivåer av hävstång vilket blir merkostsamt i sämre finansiella klimat med högre räntor. Det finns många individuella faktorer somförklarar utvecklingen för varje specifikt bolag, dock har fyra faktorer konstaterats inneha en extra storbetydelse för hur aktiemarknaden har reagerat på de individuella bolagen. Detta har varitägarstrukturen, kapitalstrukturen, fastighetsportföljen och värderingen på bolaget vid ingången tillperioden. Det har varit viktigt att ha en stark finansiell position, både för bolaget men också dess ägare. Detta ärett mönster som har kunnat tydas via nyheter samt intervjuer. Gällande fastighetsportfölj haraktiemarknaden, bland de bolag som analyserats, handlat ner de fastighetsbolag som haft majoritetenav sin fastighetsportfölj bestående av bostäder och samhällsfastigheter. Bolagen som hade den störstanedgången i dess aktiekurser mellan november 2021 och november 2022 hade generellt högrevärderingar vid ingången till perioden. Detta berodde på att aktiemarknaden, vid de förändrademarknadsförutsättningarna, skiftade i vad som premierades. / After the relatively large drop in the stock market in February 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic,the stock market experienced a very strong recovery between March 2020 and November 2021. Asinflation increased in 2021, more people started to forecast future interest rate increases. This,combined with other factors, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, led many investors tobecome passive and skeptical about the performance of the stock market. From November 2021 toNovember 2022, the broad Stockholm index, OMX Stockholm PI, fell by 22 percent. The real estateindex, OMX Stockholm Real Estate PI, had a much larger decline of 44 percent. The purpose of the study was to investigate which real estate companies whose share prices had thegreatest deviation from the real estate index during the period November 2021 to November 2022, andwhy. The study has been based on both a qualitative and quantitative survey. In the qualitativeresearch, 6 highly relevant persons have been interviewed. The quantitative part consists of a sectorcomparison and in-depth analysis of the 10 real estate companies that deviated the most from the indexduring the selected period. The result shows that all real estate companies had a negative development in their share pricesbetween November 2021 and November 2022. One reason why real estate companies have been morenegatively affected, compared to other sectors, is that real estate companies generally use higher levelsof leverage, which becomes more costly in poorer financial climates with higher interest rates. Whilethere are many individual factors that explain the performance of each specific company, four factorshave been found to be particularly important in determining how the stock market has reacted toindividual companies. These have been the ownership structure, the capital structure, the real estateportfolio and the valuation of the company at the beginning of the period. It has been important to have a strong financial position, both for the company and its owners. This isa pattern that has been evident from news reports and interviews. Regarding the real estate portfolio,among the companies analyzed, the stock market has traded down the real estate companies that hadthe majority of their real estate portfolio consisting of housing and community properties. Thecompanies that experienced the largest decline in their share prices between November 2021 andNovember 2022 generally had higher valuations at the beginning of the period. This was because thestock market, in the context of changing market conditions, shifted in what was rewarded.

Sammanfattning Forskningsfrågor Vilket samband finns mellan sänkningen av kapitalkravet för privata aktiebolag från 100 000 kronor till 50 000 kronor och deras överlevnadsförmåga? Vilket samband finns mellan sänkningen av kapitalkravet för privata aktiebolag från 50 000 kronor till 25 000 kronor och deras överlevnadsförmåga? Syfte Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilken påverkan sänkta krav på investeringskapital har för privata aktiebolags förmåga att överleva på marknaden. Metod Studien har genomförts med en kvantitativ metod baserad på sekundärdata. Sekundärdatan innehåller information om antal företagskonkurser, dess aktiekapital och antal aktiva år utifrån två olika startår, 2010 och 2020. Datan är hämtad från databasen Retriever Business och sammanställts manuellt i ett excel-dokument. Datan har utifrån sammanställningen analyserats med hjälp av linjär regression. Studiens analysmetod har använts för att undersöka eventuell korrelation mellan två variabler. De två studerade variablerna är aktiekapital och antal aktiva år. Slutsats De statistiska mätningarna som utförts ger inga indikationer på att det skulle finnas ett samband mellan det sänkta kapitalkravet och företags överlevnad i något av fallen. Trots att mätningarna från 2020 visade en positiv riktning, visar korrelationen mellan variablerna på mycket svagt samband från båda de studerade åren. Hypotesprövningen visar att nollhypotesen inte kan förkastas i något av fallen, till följd av p-värde som överstiger 0,05. Slutligen kan utifrån insamlade data konstateras att majoriteten av företagskonkurserna från båda de studerade åren hade ett aktiekapital i lägsta intervall, 75,6 procent från 2010 och 91 procent från 2020. / Abstract Reasearch questions What are the connections between the lowering of the share capital for private limited companies from 100 000 sek to 50 000 sek and their survivability? What are the connections between the lowering of the share capital for private limited companies from 50 000 sek to 25 000 sek and their survivability? Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of reduced share capital and the company´s survivability. Method The study has been done with a quantitative method based on secondary data. The secondary data contains information about the number of business bankruptcies, their share capital and number of their active years based on two different atarting years, 2010 and 2020. The data is picked from the database Retriever Business and has been compiled in Excel. The data has from excel analyzed using linear regression. The analysis method is chosen to examine possible correlation between two variables. The two variables are share capital and the number of years when the company has been active. Conclusion The statistical measurements that have been carried out give no indication that there would be a connection between the lowered capital requirement and the companieś survival. The correlation between the variables shows a very weak connection, even though the measurements from 2020 showed a positive development direction. Through a hypothesis cannot be rejected in either case, as a result of a p-value that exceeds 0,05. Finally, based on collected data ascertain that the majority of the corporate bankruptcies from both years have a share capital in the lowest interval, 75,6 percent for 2010 and 91 percent frpm 2020.

I cover three topics in empirical microeconomics. In the first chapter, titled Investor Attention to Firm versus Market-wide Information Shocks: Evidence from North Korean Missile Tests, I study whether attention towards salient political events leads to underutilization of firm-specific information in the South Korean stock market. I find that companies with earnings surprises in the top quartile experience a 1.6% increase in the abnormal return on the announcement day, but a same-day missile test takes away 70% of the positive response. In the second chapter, titled Does Cultural Proximity Mitigate the Effect of Immigration on Electoral Outcomes? (with Gerard Domènech), we study the effect of immigration on electoral outcomes using individual-level administrative data in Spain. In a multiple instrumentations framework, we find that recent immigrants who arrived within two years are associated with an increase in the vote share of the extremist parties. Such an effect persists for additional two years but dissipates in the long-term. When split by regions of origin, African immigrants have the greatest impact, followed by Latin American immigrants. European immigrants do not affect the extremist vote shares. An analysis of the unemployment rate and the number of children suggests that immigrants tend to assimilate over time. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that cultural proximity mitigates the political reaction to immigrants. In the third chapter, titled The Effect of Daddy Quota on Gender Labor Market Outcomes (with Petra Niedermeyerova), we study the impact of a father-specific parental leave policy on labor market outcomes in Quebec, Canada. Using a province-level difference-in-difference approach, we find that the so-called daddy quota increases the probability of employment for women and decreases the wage of younger men. The results suggest that the daddy quota promoted equal opportunities for women in the labor market. In a theoretical framework, we show that policy-driven changes in gender norms are consistent with our findings.

Advances in information technology have presented the potential to automate investment decision making processes. This will alleviate the need for manual analysis and reduce the subjective nature of investment decision making. However, there are different investment approaches and perspectives for investing which makes acquiring and representing expert knowledge for share evaluation challenging. Current decision models often do not reflect the real investment decision making process used by the broader investment community or may not be well-grounded in established investment theory. This research investigates the efficacy of using ontologies and Bayesian networks for automating share evaluation on the JSE. The knowledge acquired from an analysis of the investment domain and the decision-making process for a value investing approach was represented in an ontology. A Bayesian network was constructed based on the concepts outlined in the ontology for automatic share evaluation. The Bayesian network allows decision makers to predict future share performance and provides an investment recommendation for a specific share. The decision model was designed, refined and evaluated through an analysis of the literature on value investing theory and consultation with expert investment professionals. The performance of the decision model was validated through back testing and measured using return and risk-adjusted return measures. The model was found to provide superior returns and risk-adjusted returns for the evaluation period from 2012 to 2018 when compared to selected benchmark indices of the JSE. The result is a concrete share evaluation model grounded in investing theory and validated by investment experts that may be employed, with small modifications, in the field of value investing to identify shares with a higher probability of positive risk-adjusted returns.

This study examines how the relation of earnings and payout is influenced by country-level moderators of investor protection and creditor rights. By using an international sample with 42,148 firm-year observations in 3,658 firms during the years 2001-2017, I find that earningspayout relation is strong. Further, I present evidence that the earnings-payout relation is alleviated in weak investor protection and creditor right countries due to the negative influence of dividends. Although share repurchases positively impact the strong earnings-payout relation, the positive effect of share repurchases is weaker compared to the negative one of dividends. As a consequence, in weak investor protection and creditor right countries, the strong earnings-payout relation is alleviated when it is tested with the logit regression.

The growth of the mutual fund industry and the accompanying competition among intermediaries should lead to progressively lower costs to shareholders, based on economic theory. This dissertation is comprised of three studies which examine shareholder costs among mutual funds to test this theory. In each study the expense ratios of mutual funds are examined, while one study also includes an examination of commission structures. In Essay 1, the effect of participation in a supermarket No Transaction Fee program on a fund’s expense ratio is examined. In addition, the change in characteristics of these participants during a difficult market period is studied. Essay 1 finds that NTF participation leads to higher initial expense ratios but that continued participation depends on the program’s ability to pay for itself. In Essay 2, market segmentation within the fund industry is examined for this same time period. Essay 2 finds increased market segmentation over a five year period and finds evidence of competitive pricing only among certain segments. Retail investors who invest in no-load funds appear to benefit from competitive pricing more than those who pay commissions. There is evidence of cost shifting during this time period, as funds lower expense ratios but increase commissions. In Essay 3, expense ratios of common funds within state-sponsored defined contribution plans are examined. Essay 3 finds evidence of market segmentation among the various states. Plan size may have some effect on the setting of expense ratios, but the effect does not appear to be economically significant. Number of participants has no significant effect on the expense ratio. State population displays some significance, such that funds actually charge more for larger states. Wealth of the state, on the other hand, may result in lower expense ratios. Overall, competitive pricing within the mutual fund industry is limited to certain market segments and may be dependent on the channel of distribution.

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