The first essay investigates how individual characteristics influence sales outcomes for houses they help transact. It develops hedonic housing models to assess the impacts of agent characteristics such as the level of recent and concurrent agent activity on sales outcomes (price and time on market). This is done in a Multiple Listing Service (MLS) setting using seven years of data obtained from a large Midwestern city. I find evidence that more active listing agents sell homes more quickly, though they do so to the detriment of final sales price. I also find that more listings concurrently held by agents have a statistically significant, negative effect on price. Selling agents appear to be quite neutral in the process and have little effect on either sales price or time on market. The second essay defines market concentrations of residential real estate brokerage services across one hundred diverse U.S. markets. Since real estate is immobile, each geographical location constitutes a local market and thus national measures of market concentration, of the type espoused by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), are of little value. The only way to get a meaningful picture of the market in general is to collectively examine observations at the city/town level. Once indices of concentration are obtained, it may be possible to get a sense of minimum and maximum scale efficiencies as well as what market specific characteristics give rise to high or low concentrations. The third essay examines the “just-below” pricing strategy in the context of home sales. Many retailers price their goods/services directly below some round amount (i.e. pricing at $2.99 instead of $3.00) and a number of studies document the effectiveness of this strategy on the demand for relatively inexpensive items (clothing, groceries, small appliances, etc). A lesser developed strand of literature examines the prevalence and effectiveness of just-below pricing in the context of larger purchases, namely real estate. This essay affirms the prevalence of just-below pricing in home transactions and finds evidence that just-below pricing can yield a higher final transaction price compared to homes initially priced on an even price point.

A theoretical and experimental study of mechanical properties of electrical cables with multi order helical structure has been performed. Relations between applied deformations and local strains in the first order helical structure have been developed. The model is then generalized with a hierarchical approach where the strains at any order helical structure are expressed as functions of strains in the upper order helix under the assumption that all components are sticking to each other. The force balance between the strains and the friction forces is considered. When the cable is exposed to small bending curvature, the slippage of the component is prevented by the frictional force. At this stage, the components of the cable behave as solid beams. Slippage occurs between the components when the tensile force in the components overcomes the frictional force. This state occurs at sufficiently large bending curvatures and results in a variable bending stiffness varying with the magnitude of the applied bending curvature. The response of the cable to pure bending is measured and the data is evaluated using the theoretical model described above. Magnitudes of un- known properties of the cable are estimated by comparing the theoretical and experimental data. To utilize the model in terms of life time estimation, a number of parameters were suggested to relate the mechanical properties of the cable to wear and fatigue. A parametric study has been done to investigate how these parameters are affected by changing cable properties or the loading condition. / QC 20101203

Real estate companies are capital intense and bank loans represent the most common source of funding. However, the years following the latest financial crisis resulted in difficult terms and expensive bank loans, which cleared a path for alternative sources of funding. Small and me-dium-sized real estate companies displayed a particular interest in corporate bonds and ever since then the real estate sector have been overrepresented on the Swedish corporate bond mar-ket. Despite the growth during the past years, the Swedish market still appears to be underde-veloped compared to other countries. However, several trends are now indicating that High Yield is on the rise. New regulations that are currently being implemented will increase the costs for banks further and consequently make bank loans even more expensive. Simultane-ously, the current low interest-rate environment and volatile stock markets are increasing de-mand for High Yield alternatives among retail and institutional investors. This study investi-gates the High Yield market for small and medium-sized real estate companies and is built upon eleven interviews with professionals. It concludes that the market is underdeveloped because there has been no previous demand for it. Swedish banks and companies have traditionally had a synergetic relationship while investors relied on saving accounts and equities. The situation today is different; investors are demanding High Yield investments and the segment will most probably increase in the future. Real estate companies are positive to bonds and wish to increase the current ratio of their debt portfolio. There are however several barriers for continued growth, such as lack of knowledge, transparency, liquidity as well as fair pricing in the market. In the current state, corporate bond investments are suitable only for professional investors. The ex-emption is High Net Worth Individuals, who buy and hold, which are particularly suited for smaller corporate bonds. / Fastighetsföretag bedriver kapitalintensiv verksamhet och den vanligaste finansieringsformen för svenska fastighetsföretag är idag banklån. Efter den senaste finanskrisen har dock bankut-låningen blivit mer restriktiv vilket särskilt har drabbat mindre företag. Till följd av detta har alternativa finansieringsformer blivit allt vanligare där företagsobligationer blivit särskilt in-tressanta för små och medelstora fastighetsföretag. Sedan finanskrisen har specifikt fastighets-företagen varit överrepresenterade på den svenska företagsobligationsmarknaden. Faktum är ändock att företagsobligationsmarknaden i Sverige, trots tillväxt de senaste åren, framstår som underutvecklad i jämförelse med andra länder. Flertalet trender pekar emellertid på att den kom-mer att fortsätta blomma ut. För närvarande implementeras nya regelverk som ökar kostnaderna för bankerna och potentiellt kommer att leda till större restriktioner och dyrare banklån. Vidare bidrar dagens låga ränteläge i kombination med volatila aktiemarknader till att efterfrågan på företagsobligationer bland investerare, privata såväl som institutionella, ökar. Studien undersö-ker företagsobligationsmarknaden inom High Yield segmentet för små och medelstora fastig-hetsföretag och bygger på elva intervjuer med yrkesverksamma. Det konkluderas att marknaden är underutvecklad då den ej har efterfrågats tidigare. De svenska bankerna och fastighetsföre-tagen har sedan länge en symbiotisk relation samtidigt som investerare har förlitat sig på spar-konton och aktier. Idag är situationen annorlunda där fler investerare efterfrågar High Yield produkter. Fastighetsföretagen är positiva till obligationer och önskar öka nuvarande andel i sina skuldportföljer. Det finns dock barriärer för den fortsatta tillväxten på marknaden, där-ibland brist på kunskap, transparens och likviditet samt ifrågasatt prissättning. Direktinveste-ringar i företagsobligationer idag lämpar sig därför för professionella investerare. Undantaget är kapitalstarka privatpersoner som ämnar att hålla instrumentet till förfall vilka lämpar sig sär-skilt bra som investerare i mindre företagsobligationer.

The industrial robot is a flexible and cheap standard component that can becombined with a milling head to complete low accuracy milling tasks. Thefuture goal for researchers and industry is to increase the milling accuracy, suchthat it can be introduced to more high value added operations.The serial build up of an industrial robot bring non-linear compliance andchallenges in vibration mitigation due to the member and reducer design. WithAdditive Manufacturing (AM), the traditional cast aluminum structure couldbe revised and, therefore, milling accuracy gain could be made possible due tostructural changes.This thesis proposes the structural changes that would improve the millingaccuracy for a specific trajectory. To quantify the improvement, first the robothad to be reverse engineered and a kinematic simulation model be built. Nextthe kinematic simulation process was automated such that multiple input parameterscould be varied and a screening conducted that proposed the mostprofitable change.It was found that a mass decrease in any member did not affect the millingaccuracy and a stiffness increase in the member of the second axis would increasethe milling accuracy the most, without changing the design concept. To changethe reducer in axis 1 would reduce the mean position error by 7.5 % and themean rotation error by 4.5 % approximately, but also reduces the maximumspeed of the robot. The best structural change would be to introduce twosupport bearings for axis two and three, which decreased the mean positioningerror and rotation error by approximately 8 % and 13 % respectively. / En industrirobot är en anpassningsbar och relativt billig standardkomponent.Den kan utrustas med ett fräshuvud för att genomföra fräsoperationer med låg noggrannhet. Det framtida målet för forskare och industri är att öka noggrannheten vid fräsning så att dess användningsområde kan utökas till ändamål som kräver högre precision.Den seriella uppbyggnaden av en industrirobot medför icke-linjär styvhet och därmed utmaningar vid vibrationsdämpning. Detta på grund av den strukturella uppbyggnaden då en industrirobot kan förenklat sägas vara uppbyggd av balkelement som i ledpunkterna kopplas samman av växellådor. Med friformsframställning kan en mer komplex struktur erhållas jämfört med traditionellt gjuten aluminiumkonstruktion därmed skulle en ökad noggrannhet vid fräsning kunna uppnås.Det här examensarbetet föreslår strukturella ändringar som skulle kunna öka noggrannheten vid fräsning för en specifik fräsbana. För att kvantifiera förbättringen, var det först nödvändigt att utgående från tillgänglig data konstruktion en specific robot samt att bygga en kinematisk modell. Därefter automatiserades beräkningsflödet så att ett flertal indata kunde varieras. Detta resulterande i en kombinationsstudie som visade den mest gynsamma strukturella förändringen.Det visade sig att en minskning av balkelementens massa inte påverkade nogrannheten. Att öka styvheten i balkelementet från den andra axeln skulle d¨aremot öka nogrannheten mest utan att behöva ändra robotens uppbyggnad.Att byta växellåda i första axeln kan öka positionsnogrannheten med nära 7.5 % och rotationsnoggrannheten med cirka 4.5 % men ändringen sänker samtidigt den maximala hastigheten. Den bästa strukturella förändringen vore att introducera ett stödlager vid axel två respektive tre, vilket skulle förbättra positionsnogrannheten med cirka 8 % och rotationsnogrannheten med nära 13 %.