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Firm Ecosystem

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Material

A raw material is an unprocessed or minimally processed natural or synthetic substance that serves as the primary input in a manufacturing or transformation process, possessing intrinsic physical, chemical, or biological properties that determine its suitability for conversion into intermediate or final products.

🌍 Global Industrial Material Usage Shares

Material Annual Production Approximate % of Total Material Use Notes & Context
Concrete \~33 billion t/year \~30–40 % Most-consumed human-made material after water([reddit.com][1]); in construction, \~65.7 % of material volume([wired.com][2]).
Cement \~4–4.5 billion t/year \~5 % (as binder) Cement is component of concrete. Worldwide = \~4 % of global emissions; massive consumption.
Steel (iron & steel) \~1.8 billion t/year \~15–20 % Steel dominates metals/mining revenues; \~60–70 % of metals/mining; \~8.8 % of construction materials use.
Aluminum \~60 million t/year (primary) \~1–2 % Second-most abundant metal used; per capita \~80 kg; \~33 % recycled.
Plastics (polymers) \~370–400 million t/year \~3–4 % Polymer output \~80 % of chemicals industry; packaging \~40 % of use.
Composites \~13 million t/year <1 % (by volume) Niche materials in aerospace, high-end construction; their mass is small relative to bulk materials.

References

  • Drexl, Josef. "Designing competitive markets for industrial data." J. Intell. Prop. Info. Tech. & Elec. Com. L. 8 (2017): 257.
  • Liang, Fan, et al. "A survey on big data market: Pricing, trading and protection." Ieee Access 6 (2018): 15132-15154.
  • Pistor, Katharina. "Rule by data: The end of markets?." Law & Contemp. Probs. 83 (2020): 101.
  • Caulkins, Jonathan P., and Peter Reuter. "What price data tell us about drug markets." Journal of drug issues 28.3 (1998): 593-612.
  • Agarwal, Anish, Munther Dahleh, and Tuhin Sarkar. "A marketplace for data: An algorithmic solution." Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation. 2019.
  • Miller, Mark S., and K. Eric Drexler. "Markets and computation: Agoric open systems." The ecology of computation 1 (1988).
  • Hao, Jun, Zeyu Deng, and Jianping Li. "The evolution of data pricing: From economics to computational intelligence." Heliyon 9.9 (2023).
  • Mirowski, Philip. "Markets come to bits: Evolution, computation and markomata in economic science." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 63.2 (2007): 209-242.
  • The Material Project