Innovation and technological change has always been recognized as a motor for economicgrowth in economic literature. It is also agreed amongst economists that competition fostersinnovation, and thus, is an essential component of economic progress (Teece, 1992).Coase (1937, p. 388) remarks in his...

Once serving the whole value chain by what has become known as vertical integration,companies have long since started to outsource value creation processesto specialized partners. Moreover, societal changes have induced a paradigm shiftfrom product-driven to service-dominated value creation....

Since the advent of the Internet, electronic commerce has become an integral partof everyday life in most parts of the world. In 2009 private consumers in Germanypurchased goods and services worth 15.5bn EUR via e-commerce market places onthe Internet, an increase of 14.4% over the year before....

Auctions are nowadays a popular and frequently employed market mechanism in electronicmarkets. In economic literature, the success of electronic auctions has been largelyattributed to the reduction of transaction costs, the large number of potential buyers,and the independence of time and space....

This citation by Robert Neal and Simon Wheatley from their 1998 article about investorsentiment offers several insights and paves the way for this first chapter by making thefollowing statements: First, the opinion of individual investors on the market isimportant. Second, they are often wrong....

Increasing the shares of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and Distributed EnergyResources (DER) is one of the most important levers in many countries to cope withthe environmental, political, and economic challenges of future energy supply. Theunderlying question of this thesis is whether...

Autonomous agents are widely applied to automate interactions in robotics,e.g. for selling and purchasing goods on eBay, and in financial markets, e.g. in theform of quote machines and algorithmic traders. Current research investigates efficienteconomic mechanisms that fully automate the...

Grid technologies and the related concepts of utility computing and cloud computingenable the dynamic sourcing of computer resources and services, thus allowing enterprisesto cut down on hardware and software expenses and to focus on key competencies andprocesses. Resources are shared across...

Contemporary studies show that the usage of health-related web portals increases continuously. Additionally, the internet’s usage is in a transition towards more user participation by allowing more and more user generated content. In the area of health care this development is commonly called...

In this article we provide a seminal academic investigationof mobile telephony consumers’ perception of the recentlyintroduced cost cap tariff in comparison to corresponding payper-use and flatrate calling plans. Previous studies have identifiedseveral psychological effects through which...