Increasingly, the ME industry is required to cope with more severe market fluctuations than most other branches of industry. As on of the prime supplying industries of capital goods, it is highly dependent on the investment activity of the purchasing companies, which are highly sensitive to developments in the economy as a whole. This applies above all to industry’s investments in equipment and machinery, into which most ME products flow either directly or indirectly. A chain of action exists here which has been incorporated into the analytical framework as the “acceleration principle”. .
