Dividend Smoothing in Sweden - An Empirical Investigation of Determinants of Dividend Smoothing

Purpose: The main purpose is to see if dividend smoothing is a pertinent phenomenon among Swedish public firms. The study also aims to identify what firm characteristics that drive dividend smoothing. Theoretical Framework: The theoretical framework covers different explanations of dividend smoothing behavior, such as information asymmetries, agency issues and investor clientele motivations. Also, share repurchases are given as an explanation of dividend smoothing behavior. Empirical Foundation: The study covers firms listed on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, that have been paying dividends every single year during the period of 2001-2012, or for as long as the company has been listed, for a minimum of 7 years. 85 companies are making the cut. Methodology: Quantitative approach using Lintner’s partial adjustment model as well as multiple regression analyses. Conclusion: Dividend smoothing seems to be an occurring phenomena among Swedish public firms. The results of this study mainly support agency theory as being a determining factor of dividend smoothing, while there is no support for information asymmetry and investor clientele motivations. Further, firms that repurchase shares seem to be more likely to smooth their dividends than other firms

Accuracy of the Chinese lunar calendar method to predict a baby's sex: a population-based study

Villamor E, Dekker L, Svensson T, Cnattingius S. Accuracy of the Chinese lunar calendar method to predict a baby's sex: a population-based study. Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology 2010.We estimated the accuracy of a non-invasive, inexpensive method (the Chinese lunar calendar, CLC) to predict the sex of a baby from around the time of conception, using 2 840 755 singleton births occurring in Sweden between 1973 and 2006. Maternal lunar age and month of conception were estimated, and used to predict each baby's sex, according to a published algorithm. Kappa statistics were estimated for the actual vs. the CLC-predicted sex of the baby.Overall kappa was 0.0002 [95% CI −0.0009, 0.0014]. Accuracy was not modified by year of conception, maternal age, level of education, body mass index or parity. In a validation subset of 1000 births in which we used a website-customised algorithm to estimate lunar dates, kappa was −0.02 [95% CI −0.08, 0.04]. Simulating the misuse of the method by failing to convert Gregorian dates into lunar did not change the results. We conclude that the CLC method is no better at predicting the sex of a baby than tossing a coin and advise against painting the nursery based on this method's result.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/79303/1/j.1365-3016.2010.01129.x.pd

The Swedish demand for food : a conditional Rotterdam model approach

The demand for food is susceptible to variation in several factors. Knowledge about the nature of food commodities and how consumers react are important for decision makers. The Swedish consumers have decreased the budget share spent on food commodities during the end of the 20th century (Eidstedt et al. 2009). The purpose of the study is therefore to analyze the Swedish demand for food over the period 1980-2011. By estimating price and expenditure elasticities for the Swedish consumers the nature of the demand can be found, allowing for analysis of how consumers react to changes in price and expenditure. A conditional Rotterdam demand system approach is used in order to find the elasticities. Testing of separable utility structures is also conducted in order to verify plausible structures for the Swedish consumers, which can be employed when constructing complete demand systems. The estimated result was obtained maintaining the hypothesis of the laws of demand. Given the conditional approach, approximations of unconditional elasticities were computed. Both the unconditional and conditional own-price elasticities indicate that the Swedish demand is insensitive to price changes. The estimated conditional expenditure elasticities indicate a mixed result between luxury commodities and necessities (sensitive and insensitive commodities). The approximation of the unconditional expenditure elasticities does however indicate that the demand is insensitive to expenditure changes. The robustness of the expenditure elasticities is however uncertain given the problems of the Rotterdam approach, a more flexible functional form for the expenditure elasticities is desired. For the separable utility structures, the hypothesizes that; meat can be weakly separable from other commodities, and the hypothesis that the demand can be weakly separable according to; animal, vegetable-based and beverage products, could not be rejected. This indicates that the verified structures can be incorporated in a complete demand system reducing the risk of misspecification

Utvärdering av en ny mall för en systematisk genomgång av hundens normala rörelsemönster : hur användbar är mallen för undervisning av veterinärstudenter?

Arbetet syftade till att skapa och utvärdera ett undervisningsmaterial om normalt rörelsemönster hos hund för veterinärstudenter. Undervisningsmaterialet byggdes kring en mall som skulle möjligöra för studenterna att på ett systematiskt sätt gå igenom hundens normala rörelsemönster. Mallen utformades med befintliga mallar för hältdetektion som grund. Dessa mallar bearbetades och omformades till en ny mall utgående från normalt rörelsemönster. Undervisningsmaterialet hade ytterligare två delar, ett filmarkiv med friska hundar som rör sig i främst skritt och trav filmade från sidan, bakifrån och framifrån, samt en sammanställning av hundens gångarter och grundläggande begrepp inom rörelseanalys hos hund. När undervisningsmaterialet var färdigt skapades en övning där studenterna skulle använda mallen samtidigt som de tittade på filmer ur filmarkivet. Övningsinstruktioner och undervisningsmaterial lades upp på internet tillsammans med en utvärdering. Samtliga studenter i årskurs 4 på veterinärprogrammet vid Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet fick tillgång till undervisningsmaterialet, övningen och utvärderingen via sin studentinloggning. Av sjuttioåtta studenter i årskurs 4 besvarade tjugofem utvärderingen. Studenterna var överlag mycket positiva till övningen och mallen. Exempelvis poängsattes övningens totalintryck i medelpoäng till 4,4 på en skala mellan 1 och 5. Materialets användbarhet bedömdes som hög och materialet ansågs vara lättbegripligt. Både övningens instruktioner och dokumentet med grundbegrepp fick i medeltal 4,56 poäng med avseende på den textmässiga kvaliteten. Studenterna visade stor vilja att upprepa övningen och upplevde själva att de ökade sitt kunnande om normalt rörelsemönster hos hund genom att göra övningen. Den genomsnittsliga ökningen i eget värderat kunnande efter övningen jämfört med före var 1,12 poäng högre på en femgradig skala. Vidare forskning krävs dock för att undersöka om det rör sig om en reell kunskapsökning. Förhoppningsvis kan arbetet inspirera till fler utvärderingar av befintliga och nya checklistor/mallar och fler vetenskapliga utvärderingar av undervisningsmaterial för veterinärstudenter.The work aimed at creating and evaluating an educational material for veterinary students about the normal patterns of movement in dogs. The teaching material was created around a template that would enable students to systematically go through the normal movement pattern of the dog. The template was created with inspiration from existing templates for lameness detection. These templates were combined and remodeled into a new template focused on normal patterns of movement. The teaching material had two additional parts, an archive of videos showing healthy dogs moving in mostly walk and trot, filmed from the side, rear and front, and a summary of the dog's gaits and basic concepts of motion analysis in the dog. When the teaching material was ready an exercise in which the students would use the template while watching videos from the archive were created. The instructions for the exercise were posted on the internet along with the educational material and an evaluation. All students in year 4 of the study program in veterinary medicine at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences had access to the teaching material, the exercise and the evaluation through the student internet login. Twenty-five of the seventy-eight students in the fourth grade responded to the evaluation. The students were generally very positive to the exercise and the template. For example, the overall impression of the exercise was in mean scored 4.4 on a scale between 1 and 5. The usefulness of the teaching material was judged to be high and the material was considered to be readily understood. Both exercise instructions and the document with the basic concepts was given an average score of 4.56 in terms of their textual quality. The students were generally willing to repeat the exercise and felt that they increased their knowledge about the normal pattern of canine movement by doing the exercise. Based on self-evaluation, the mean increase in their knowledge after the exercise compared to before was 1.12 points higher on a five-point scale. Further research is needed, however, in order to find out if there is a real increase in knowledge. Hopefully, the work can inspire to more evaluations of existing and new checklists/templates and more scientific evaluations of educational material for veterinary students

Bankernas resultatsammansättning - En fallstudie av Handelsbanken och Sparbanken Finn

Syftet med vår uppsats är att undersöka hur bankerna intäkts- och kostnadsstruktur har förändrats över de senaste 20 åren. För att uppnå vårt syfte har vi använt oss av en induktiv metod. Vi utgår från empirin för att sedan söka förståelse för denna i olika teorier. Våra slutsatser är att båda bankerna har minskat sina intäkter från räntenettot och istället ökat intäkterna från avkastning och utdelning från handel med värdepapper. Det är stora skillnader i in- och utlåning, övriga lån och bankcertifikat mellan bankerna. För Sparbanken Finn har den tekniska utvecklingen inneburit att man kunnat effektivisera sitt samarbete med andra finansiella aktörer och för Handelsbanken även att det uppstått en konkurrensfördel i form av en kostnad som kan fördelas på fler kontor, och i slutändan fler kunder jämfört med en mindre bank

En märklig informationsbrist om ekologiska livsmedel

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka vilken kunskap konsumenter har om ekologiska märkningar i dagsläget samt hur de uppfattar olika ekologiska märkningar för att förstå hur marknadskommunikationen kan optimeras för att öka försäljningen av ekologiska varor. För att genomföra uppsatsens syfte har vi använt oss av en kvantitativ studie och en kvalitativ förstudie. Den kvantitativa studien baseras på en enkätundersökning som respondenter i Lund, Malmö och Göteborg fått ta del av. Enkäten behandlade samtliga teoriområden. Det finns en stor kunskapsbrist bland konsumenter om vad ekologiska märkningar står för. Ingen universell väg att kommunicera det ekologiska budskapet finns men faktabaserade retoriska argument har störst påverkan på alla tre typer av konsumenter vi har identifierat. Vi har även funnit ett positivt samband mellan färgen grön i kombination med antalet märkningar på förpackningen och det ekologiska intrycket av produkten

Femur shaft fracture at a young age and the risk of subsequent severe injuries during childhood: a cohort study

Background: A child who suffers a fracture or a soft-tissue injury at a young age faces an increased risk of subsequent injuries during childhood. This risk could be related to personal and family characteristics or to lower-than-average bone-mineral density. The purpose of this nationwide cohort study was to estimate the association between a femur shaft fracture at a young age and the subsequent risk of hospitalization for injuries during childhood. Methods: We compared the subsequent risk of hospitalization for injuries during childhood among 1,404 children (exposed) who were one to three years of age when they suffered a femur shaft fracture with the risk among 13,814 randomly selected, gender- and age-matched femur fracture–free children (unexposed). Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for severe injuries defined as fractures or soft-tissue injuries requiring hospital admission were estimated in a Cox proportional hazards model. Results: Exposed children exhibited no significantly increased risk of upper-extremity fractures or soft-tissue injuries during childhood, regardless of sex and follow-up time. Boys exhibited a 162% increased risk of suffering a lower leg fracture requiring hospital admission (HR?=?2.62, 95% CI: 1.45–4.71), but the refracture risk was not significant for girls 2.02 (0.58–6.97). Conclusions: We found an increased risk for subsequent fractures in the lower leg that requires inpatient care during childhood for boys, but not for girls, who were one to three years of age when they first suffered a femur shaft fracture. This increased fracture risk is probably not simply the result of greater risk-taking among boys. The explanation might relate to factors affecting the bone quality of the lower leg