In late 2019, the spread of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) began. The viral disease, also known as covid-19, started spreading from China to large parts of the world in early 2020, resulting in a large number of cases, deaths, as well as major impacts on the economy of nations, organizations, and individuals alike. In order to limit the spread of the virus, several pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, initiated a vaccine development. This process led pharmaceutical companies to communicat ea large amount of corporate news to investors, among other stakeholders. Previous research has shown how the stock market responds to corporate news. However, prior to this study, a lack of research on how the stock market behaves in relation to corporate news announced by companies under difficult global conditions was identified. The aim of this study is to investigate the stock market's reaction to press releases by Moderna and Pfizer regarding their vaccine development for covid-19. The methods used to study the subject are based on analysis of historical share price data and the calculation of abnormal returns. The results have to some extent indicated that selected press releases have played a significant role as an influencer in relation to investor sentiment and the stock market’s behavior. In terms of the result as a whole, the number of significant days is not sufficient to support the alternative hypothesis. Market reactions in the share prices were identified on the dates surrounding the press releases regarding the vaccine-development, but since only 22 percent of the abnormal yield was significant, the result did not appear to be aligned with the alternative hypothesis. / Under slutet av år 2019 började spridningen av coronaviruset SARS-CoV-2 (Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). Virussjukdomen, i folkmun känd som covid-19, började under år 2020 spridas från Kina till stora delar av övriga världen, vilket har resulterat i ett stort antal insjuknade, dödsfall och även en påverkan på såväl nationers som organisationers och individers ekonomi. För att begränsa spridningen av viruset påbörjade ett flertal läkemedelsbolag en vaccinframtagning. Denna process ledde till att läkemedelsbolagen kommunicerade en stor mängd bolagsnyheter till omvärlden, däribland investerare. Tidigare forskning har visat hur aktiemarknaden svarat på bolagsnyheter, men inför denna studie identifierades en brist på forskning kring hur aktiemarknaden agerar i förhållande till bolagsnyheter under extrema världssituationer likt coronaviruspandemin. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka marknadens reaktion till följd av pressmeddelanden från företagen Moderna och Pfizer rörande vaccinutvecklingen för covid-19. Reaktionen studeras med hjälp av historiska aktiekursdata och beräkning av onormal avkastning. Resultaten har till en viss del indikerat på att utvalda pressmeddelanden har spelat en signifikant roll som påverkande faktor gentemot aktiemarknaden. Sett till resultatet i sin helhet är antalet signifikanta dagar inte tillräckligt för att utgöra stöd till alternativhypotesen. Marknadsreaktioner kunde identifieras till följd av pressmeddelanden om vaccinutvecklingen, men eftersom enbart 22 procent av den onormala avkastningen var signifikant så föreföll inte resultatet i linje med alternativhypotesen.

Payout policies is one of the most discussed topics in corporate finance. Since Miller & Modigliani (1961) dividend irrelevance theory, which was based on perfect markets, many theories have been developed in order to incorporate market imperfections to payout decisions. Numerous scholars have been trying to explain why companies pay dividends, whether they should compensate investors with alternative methods such as share repurchases or not distribute cash at all. The theme has gained lots of attention during the 21-st century driven by the subprime financial crisis in 2008 and mostly recently, in 2020, due to economic impacts brought by the Covid 19 pandemic. Another important aspect that makes the study of payout policy relevant in the 21-st century is the unique impacts of unveiled trends such as globalization and volatile markets, increased importance of ecology and sustainability, emergency of fast growth firms (mainly in the Tech industry) and change characteristics of listed firms. Globally there is a tendency of reduction in the number of listed firms and also deterioration in the quality of earnings. Additionally, there is no consensus about which factors influence a firm propensity of distributing cash to shareholders, which makes the topic very intriguing. Previous research has been conducted mainly within US firms. Few studies have been conducted regarding payout policies in the Nordic countries and most of them give little attention to share repurchases and payout policy determinants. Therefore, we decided to conduct a study regarding the patterns and determinants of payout policy in the 21-st century with focus on the Nordic countries. The purposes of the study are: first, to understand the pattern of payout policies in the Nordic countries during the 21-st century and second determine if there is a relationship between a number of firm’s selected factors and firm’s payout policy. As a sub purpose we intend to examine whether the Covid 19 pandemic had any effect on Nordic firm’s payout policies. The factors investigated, namely: debt, profit, retained earnings, growth opportunities, cash holdings, size and age were identified through a detailed literature review. We collected data from Thomson Reuters DataStream Eikon covering the period between 2000 and 2020 for 1,153 firms from all Nordic countries: Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The study follows a quantitative research method with a deductive approach, and we have based the theoretical framework on the following theories: Miller-Modigliani dividend irrelevance theory, Signaling theory, Agency theory, Life-cycle theory and Substitution and Flexibility hypotheses. In order to determine whether there is a relationship between the companies selected factors and the payout ratios we conducted ordinary least square (OLS) correlation analysis. Additional regression analysis was conducted to verify possible impacts of Covid 19 on Nordic payout policies. Results indicate that some firms’ selected characteristics such as debt, size and age have an impact on Nordic firms’ payout policy during the 21-st century. Larger firms with lower debt are more willing to pay cash dividends, while older firms tend to present higher levels of share repurchase. Firms’ characteristics showed no impact on changes in payout ratios during the initial period of Covid 19.

Aktiebolag är en av de vanligaste bolagsformerna och förekommer i två skilda former, publika och privata. Vid uppstart av ett aktiebolag, oavsett form, krävs ett aktiekapital, men det som skiljer dem åt är dess storlek. För att starta ett privat aktiebolag krävs idag ett aktiekapital på 25 000 kr, vilket ändrades från 50 000 kr den 1 januari 2020 som följd av att förslaget Ds 2019:6 fick genomslagskraft. Förslaget sändes ut till ett antal utvalda instanser som Justitiedepartementet ville erhålla synpunkter från. Samtidigt hade övriga allmänheten också möjlighet att inkomma med synpunkter, utan att det blivit tillfrågade. Responsen till förslaget Ds 2019:6 utgjordes av totalt 47 remissvar från olika instanser.  Problemdiskussionen i studien indikerar på att det råder delad mening angående aktiekapitalets storlek och funktion. Detta leder fram till studiens syfte, att undersöka intressenternas attityder, utifrån inkomna remissvar, gällande lagändringen av aktiekapitalets sänkning från 50 000 kr till 25 000 kr för privata aktiebolag. Utöver detta syftar studien även till att undersöka om intressenternas attityder har haft en påverkan på beslutet att sänka aktiekapitalet. För att uppnå studiens syfte har en kvalitativ innehållsanalys valts, då huvudmomentet i studien består av att analysera de inkomna remissvaren gällande förslaget Ds 2019:6. I studien har även en abduktiv forskningsansats valts, då en ren induktiv ansats eller en ren deduktiv ansats inte anses vara aktuell. Studien omfattar ett totalurval på 47 instanser, då samtliga remissvar har bearbetats, vilket utgör studiens empiri och ligger till grund för studiens analys.  De instanser som utgör studiens empiri har delats in i olika intressentkategorier utifrån en modifierad intressentmodell. Kategorierna som förekommer i studien är följande: myndigheter, lärosäten, ideella föreningar, domstolar, branschorganisationer och företagsfrämjande organisationer. Utifrån intressentkategorierna presenteras instansernas initiala inställning samt en redogörelse av remissvaren, där det skapas en uppfattning att instanserna har relativt liknande synpunkter. Till följd av studiens analys dras slutsatserna att det är svårt att generalisera den allmänna attityden samt att instanserna inte har haft en större påverkan än vad den initiala inställningen indikerat på gällande attityden till förslaget Ds 2019:6. / Limited companies are one of the most common forms of company and occur in two different forms, public and private. When starting a limited company, regardless of form, a share capital is required, but what distinguishes them is its size. To start a private limited company, a share capital of SEK 25,000 is required today, which was changed from SEK 50,000 on January 1st, 2020 as a result of the impact of proposal Ds 2019:6. The proposal was sent out to a number of selected instances from which the Justitiedepartementet wanted to receive comments. At the same time, the rest of the public also had the opportunity to submit comments, without being asked. The response to the proposal Ds 2019: 6 consisted of a total of 47 consultation responses from various instances.  The problem discussion in the study indicates that there is a divided opinion regarding the size and function of the share capital. This leads to the purpose of the study, to examine the stakeholders' attitudes, based on comments received, regarding the law change of the share capital reduction from SEK 50,000 to SEK 25,000 for private limited companies. In addition to this, the study also aims to investigate whether the stakeholders' attitudes have had an impact on the decision to reduce the share capital. To achieve the purpose of the study, a qualitative content analysis has been chosen, as the main part of the study consists of analyzing the comments received regarding the proposal Ds 2019:6. In the study, an abductive research approach has also been chosen, as a pure inductive approach or a pure deductive approach is not considered relevant. The study comprises a total sample of 47 instances, as all consultation responses have been processed, which constitutes the study's empirical data and forms the basis for the study's analysis.  The instances that make up the study's empirical data have been divided into different stakeholder categories based on a modified stakeholder model. The categories that appear in the study are the following: authorities, universities, non-profit associations, courts, industry associations and business promotion organizations. Based on the stakeholder categories, the instances' initial attitude is presented, as well as an account of the consultation responses, where an opinion is created that the instances have relatively similar views. As a result of the study's analysis, the conclusions are drawn that it is difficult to generalize the general attitude and that the instances have not had a greater impact than what the initial attitude indicated on the current attitude to the proposal Ds 2019: 6.

Thesis (MBA.) -- University of Limpopo, 2019 / This study examined whether the presence of women in top management positions affects firms‘ performance. This study became necessary given that, whilst there is a growing call for gender equity in top managerial positions, many companies are still hesitant, as some trust that the presence of women in top management positions might weaken their market value. The main purpose of this research was to analyse the link between women in top management positions and net profit, sales turnover and share price. Secondary data on women in top management positions and companies‘ performance were collected from integrated report archives of twenty-nine (29) companies listed in the FTSE/JSE Responsible index for six years, 2010 to 2015. This study was theoretically inclined on the Resource Based Theory and related current literature. A quantitative research design was adopted. Regression statistics utilizing the Excel Spreadsheet software was used for data analysis. Findings from the statistical analysis disclosed the following: within the twenty-nine (29) companies examined, firstly, existing positive relationship between women in top management and net profit, although not significant. Secondly, there was a negative relationship between women in top management and sales turnover. Thirdly, there was a positive relationship between women in top management and share price, although not significant. The research implication and contribution are that companies that encourage women to ascend management positions may not necessarily lose market value and net profit as feared by some companies around the world. In addition, the study recommends that women in top management should have a deputy that works closely with them such that when they take family leave, these deputies will function without company performance, such as sales, dropping its value. The findings provide further research agenda on the linkage between women in top management positions, net profit, sales turnover and share price using a larger sample of companies across industries.

A growing body of international research on urban transport shows that women from all over the world are experiencing safety issues within today’s transport systems. Furthermore, these reports shed light on and discuss how gender bias within the transport sector contributes to this problem. To design future mobility services that everyone will use and enjoy, it is thus important to understand women’s travel needs and to involve a diverse group of users in the development process. With a vision of shaping mobility for a sustainable future NationalElectric Vehicles Sweden (NEVS) is developing a mobility solution consisting of connected, autonomous, and electrified vehicles designed and optimized for shared mobility within city environments. To address this issue in NEVS service this thesis applied an exploitative research approach to examining factors that affect women’s willingness to share rides with others(potential strangers) in a context where there is no driver physically present. The methodology, inspired by the ’Design Thinking’ framework consisted of two main phases:(I) Problem definition and (II) Concept development. To understand women’s safety issues within today’s transport system and frame the design challenge an extensive literature study covering the topics of women’s safety in public transport, technology acceptance, trust, and human-centered design was conducted. To further define user needs and encourage the end-users to take an active role in co-designing solutions for themselves two focus group workshops were held. The initial research and the results from the workshops further formed the basis for the subsequent Concept Development phase. A need for control over the shared travel situation revealed by the participants’ great demand for information led this phase to examine passengers' needs in relation to an In-Vehicle Information System (IVIS). Two prototypes were developed and further tested together with users to evaluate the proposed solutions. The results showed that the anthropomorphic system features used to create a more human-like interaction had a positive impact on the participants’ overall user experience and their perceived safety during a ’shared ride’ scenario. Having a female voice communicating system information made the participants feel less nervous, more comfortable, and more secure compared to when the same information was communicated solely by a visual interface. Other factors that had a major impact on the user experience in general and the perceived security were perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and freedom of choice. The results showed how not understanding how to interact with the vehicle’s physical features had a negative impact on perceived safety while freedom of choice such as being able to book a specific seat in the vehicle is indicated to have a positive impact on people’s willingness to share their journey with a stranger.

AbstractThe purpose of the present study is to find out how three high school teachers with different subject skills use interaction and interplay in their teaching. The main part of the study is based on observations of six different class sessions in history, religion, Swedish as a second language and regular Swedish. The study also includes interviews with the sessions’ corresponding teachers. The final analysis focuses on the forms of teaching, where the focus is on interaction and interplay, as well as multimodality in teaching contexts. The result is compared to the Läslyftet modules that relate to interaction and interplay, and also multimodality for the purpose of language development. The results show which interactive and multimodal strategies are used when interacting with students. Furthermore, the results show interest and commitment, as well as learning potential, potential support by applying explanations, clarifications, discussions, conversations, the Think-Pair-Share model part and the Initiate-Response-Feedback pattern (IRF) to enable students to reformulate to written language style and recontextualize their responses. In this way, knowledge and language development have been made visible in ongoing teaching.

Background: Shared decision-making (SDM) counseling for lung cancer screening is recommended by multiple professional societies and mandated by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services since lung cancer screening has both benefits and risks. However, uptake of SDM counseling as well as lung cancer screening itself remain low. We sought to develop educational text messages about lung cancer screening as an innovative implementation intervention tool to promote patient-provider discussion about lung cancer screening. Methods: After the study team drafted educational text messages about lung cancer screening, informed by existing decision aids, participants who had had lung cancer screening were recruited and asked to review and edit text messages. After that, participants eligible for lung cancer screening without the previous screening experience were recruited and were asked to select the messages to be included in this text message intervention. The final set of 14 text messages were delivered to the participants both with and without the previous lung cancer screening over a period of 14 days. Participants completed a telephone survey assessing their reactions to the messages after receiving the last message. Results: We successfully involved twelve participants with lung cancer screening experience and eleven lung cancer screening eligible participants without previous screening experience in the development of educational text messages about lung cancer screening. After one participant withdrew, 22 participants received text messages and completed the survey regarding the messages. Most participants (18 of 22) reported reading all 14 text messages, however most recommended sending fewer messages (median recommended number of messages = 10). Participants found the educational text messages informative. Only four participants reported the text messages triggered anxiety and two reported text messages disrupted their daily activities. Participants perceived the text messages would empower patients to discuss lung cancer screening with their providers. Conclusion: Participants generally supported the use of educational text messages about lung cancer screening to increase patients’ awareness and promote patient-provider discussion. Engaging patients in the development and evaluation of text messages elicited helpful feedback that will inform the content of the messages to be delivered via this lung cancer screening text messages intervention.

Sweden has once been an emigration country, but as the years went by and as the world is in constant change, it turned into an immigration country. One of the most debated questions politically and economically is the employment gap between immigrants and natives. The available studies have mainly described the employment gap between immigrants and natives by human capital factors and discrimination on the labour market. The goal of this paper is to discover the correlation between the local factors and the employment gap between European, non-European immigrants and natives, on municipality level while controlling for education level and gender. Using data from Statistics Sweden and SKR, and an OLS multiple linear regression, we could capture this effect. The local factors studied are the unemployment rate, share of immigrants, share of low-skilled jobs and the size of the municipality. The overall results suggest that the region of birth does have an impact on the employment gap between immigrants and natives, where the biggest gap is between the non-European immigrants and the natives, which is in line with previous studies. Furthermore, both Europeans’ and non-Europeans’ employment rate is mostly correlated with the municipality size followed by the local unemployment rate. Taking the limitations of this paper into account, these results are only an indication and further studies need to be made to further insure the correlation between the local factors and the employment rate.

The field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has always faced two major challenges. The first is that data is kept scattered and cannot be collected for more efficiently use. The second is that data privacy and security need to be continuously strengthened. Based on these two points, federated learning is proposed as an emerging machine learning scheme. The idea of federated learning is to collaboratively train neural networks on servers. Each user receives the current weights of the network and then sequentially sends parameter updates (gradients) based on their own data. Because the input data remains on-device and only the parameter gradients are shared, this scheme is considered to be effective in preserving data privacy. Some previous attacks also provide a false sense of security since they only succeed in contrived settings, even for a single image. Our research mainly focus on attacks on shared gradients, showing experimentally that private training data can be obtained from publicly shared gradients. We do experiments on both linear-based and convolutional-based deep networks, whose results show that our attack is capable of creating a threat to data privacy, and this threat is independent of the specific structure of neural networks. The method presented in this paper is only to illustrate that it is feasible to recover user data from shared gradients, and cannot be used as an attack to obtain privacy in large quantities. The goal is to spark further research on federated learning, especially gradient security. We also make some brief discussion on possible strategies against our attack methods of privacy. Different methods have their own advantages and disadvantages in terms of privacy protection. Therefore, data pre-processing and network structure adjustment may need to be further researched, so that the process of training the models can achieve better privacy protection while maintaining high precision. / Området artificiell intelligens har alltid stått inför två stora utmaningar. Den första är att data hålls utspridda och inte kan samlas in för mer effektiv användning. Det andra är att datasekretess och säkerhet behöver stärkas kontinuerligt. Baserat på dessa två punkter föreslås federerat lärande som ett framväxande angreppssätt inom maskininlärning. Tanken med federerat lärande är att tillsammans träna neurala nätverk på servrar. Varje användare får nätverkets aktuella vikter och skickar sedan parameteruppdateringar (gradienter) sekventiellt baserat på sina egna data. Eftersom indata förblir på enheten och endast parametergradienterna delas, anses detta schema vara effektivt för att bevara datasekretessen. Vissa tidigare attacker ger också en falsk känsla av säkerhet eftersom de bara lyckas i konstruerade inställningar, även för en enda bild. Vår forskning fokuserar främst på attacker på delade gradienter, och visar experimentellt att privat träningsdata kan erhållas från offentligt delade gradienter. Vi gör experiment på både linjärbaserade och faltningsbaserade djupa nätverk, vars resultat visar att vår attack kan skapa ett hot mot dataintegriteten, och detta hot är oberoende av den specifika strukturen hos djupa nätverk. Metoden som presenteras i denna rapport är endast för att illustrera att det är möjligt att rekonstruera användardata från delade gradienter, och kan inte användas som en attack för att erhålla integritet i stora mängder. Målet är att få igång ytterligare forskning om federerat lärande, särskilt gradientsäkerhet. Vi gör också en kort diskussion om möjliga strategier mot våra attackmetoder för integritet. Olika metoder har sina egna fördelar och nackdelar när det gäller integritetsskydd. Därför kan förbearbetning av data och justering av nätverksstruktur behöva undersökas ytterligare, så att processen med att träna modellerna kan uppnå bättre integritetsskydd samtidigt som hög precision bibehålls.

<p dir="ltr">The U.S. food supply chain, particularly the beef industry, faces growing demands for transparency and traceability due to increased consumer awareness of environmental and social impacts. A lack of transparency and access to information, along with misinformation, pose challenges to brand trust and supply chain efficiency. Emerging information technologies like RFID and blockchain are being explored to enhance traceability and information transparency, forming the topic of this dissertation.</p><p dir="ltr">This study aims to understand how the growing demand for transparency in the U.S. beef industry could reshape its supply chain structure and dynamics. It comprehensively examines the potential of information technologies like blockchain to enhance traceability, reduce transaction costs and information asymmetry and shift the supply chain structure to vertical coordination.</p><p dir="ltr">To achieve these objectives, we employed System Dynamics (SD) to model the U.S beef supply chain from 2013 to 2022, leveraging on existing literature and statistical data. This methodology was selected because of its unique ability to capture dynamic complexities and feedback among variables, allowing us to assess market dynamics and evaluate potential changes in the beef supply chain under different information technology scenarios. The model was evaluated through a series of tests and demonstrated its efficacy in simulating and analyzing the dynamics of the beef supply chain.</p><p dir="ltr">We simulated a wide range of key policy initiatives on both supply and demand sides of the beef supply chain. Our findings reveal that blockchain adoption is influenced by various factors such as market dynamics, consumer preferences, and existing power imbalances within the supply chain. Scenario analyses suggest that larger firms may be less incentivized to adopt blockchain if the market isn't ready for transparency, due to high implementation costs. Conversely, smaller firms could benefit from reduced transaction costs. Also, our results show an increased willingness to pay for transparent beef boosts the market for smaller firms and raises beef prices. Regulatory intervention may be necessary to balance the power dynamic within the supply chain, especially considering the market power held by packers.</p><p dir="ltr">This study fills existing knowledge gaps and provides valuable insights for beef supply chain stakeholders. It organizes complex data into clear, communicable causal loop diagrams and then introduces a comprehensive U.S. beef supply stock-and-flow diagram, grounded in literature, data, and trends. Finally, by synthesizing complex data and providing practical tools for decision-making, this research offers a foundation for future studies and policy recommendations in the field of supply chain transparency.</p>