Auch im ökologischen Landbau dominieren zunehmend Konventionalisierungsprozesse und Massenproduktion. Gleichzeitig sind gerade kleinere Betriebe darum bemüht, ökologische Grundnahrungsmittel zu produzieren, ohne dafür auf Praktiken der Ausbeutung von Umwelt, Tier und Mensch zurückzugreifen....

Additive manufacturing (AM) was initially designed for prototyping and product personalization, where high production quantities were not required. Now, it is also implemented for final part production to achieve cost-effective mass customization (MC). Thanks to its tool-less production and...

We ask (1) why the United States adopted the car more quickly than other countries before 1929, and (2) why in the United States the car changed from a luxury to a mass market good between 1909 and 1919. We argue that the answer is in part the success of the Model T in the United States and its...

Although recent research has explored consumers’ reactions towards mass customization (MC) in general, these studies have considered aesthetic and functional MC as one and the same. In the present article, we focus specifically on consumer response to aesthetic MC because there are some unique...

"Time for Things seeks an answer to the question of why, in mature industrial capitalist societies, increasing productivity has tended to get used to increase output and consumption as opposed to reducing the burden of work. Put simply, why do we live in a world so full of goods, many of which...

This paper analyzes the impact of large-scale expansion of biofuels on the global income distribution and poverty. A global computable general equilibrium model is used to simulate the effects of the expansion of biofuels on resource allocation, commodity prices, factor prices and household...

As technological change accelerates, and mass production encompasses more sectors, their inherent inefficiencies and inequities become more prevalent in the aggregate economy. The resulting mass market economy can be described as the combination of a large scale, innovative leading sector under...

We study mass customization in a duopoly game in which the firms' products have different qualities. Whether customization choices are made simultaneously or sequentially is endogenously determined. Specifically, the customization stage of the game involves two periods. Each firm either selects...

Automotive companies have successfully adopted mass customization. However, this production method has complicated the sales process as the customer has to go through a lot of steps to specify the product. Thus, it is important that the sales process is modified to make the producer–buyer...

As the United States rose to ascendancy in the first decades of the twentieth century, observers abroad associated American economic power most directly with its burgeoning automobile industry. In the 1930s, in a bid to emulate and challenge America, engineers from across the world flocked to...

"Consumerism and Capitalism Why did a growing number of people in a self-defined socialist country begin to need and want more and more things? This book provides the first history of consumerism during the initial decades after the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949. At the time of the...

Zoom auf die Hightech-Megacity. Shenzhen ist die Stadt der Superlative: die am schnellsten wachsende Metropole der Welt, die jüngste, offenste, reichste und teuerste Stadt Chinas. Ob Elektromobilität, Gentechnik oder Künstliche Intelligenz - bei den wichtigen Zukunftstechnologien werden hier...

Macht der Kapitalismus wenige reich und viele arm - oder immer mehr immer weniger arm? Nicht erst seit der Finanzkrise ist es wieder üblich geworden, den Kapitalismus für fast alle Übel der Welt verantwortlich zu machen. Dem setzt der Wirtschaftshistoriker Werner Plumpe die Geschichte des...

Industrial revolution is fundamentally linked with the rise of factories and the decline of skilled artisans in manufacturing. Most scholars agree that factories as compared to artisan shops were intensive in unskilled labor. Indeed, the hallmark of the early factories is the utilization of...

Purpose: This paper explores the use of the purchase power of the higher education system to catalyze the economy of scale necessary to ensure market competitiveness for solar photovoltaic electricity. Design/methodology/approach: The approach used here was to first determine the demand...

We study a model of endogenous growth where firms invest both in product and process innovations. Product innovations (that open up completely new product lines) satisfy the advanced wants of the rich. Subsequent process innovations (that decrease costs per unit of quality) transform the...

The use of (advanced) high strength sheet (A)HSS in forming, shearing and punching applications places increasing demands upon tool materials, particularly in terms of wear performance. A range of tool and sheet steel materials has been studied within the Duratool project. Tribological tests...

This paper analyzes the impact of large-scale expansion of biofuels on the global income distribution and poverty. A global computable general equilibrium model is used to simulate the effects of the expansion of biofuels on resource allocation, commodity prices, factor prices and household...

The idea of mass customization is to turn customers' heterogeneous needs into an opportunity to create value, challenging the “one size fits all” assumption of traditional mass production. In this paper, we explore the characteristics of successful mass customization implementation at the...