Debt relationships are relationships of obligations. The paper analyses debt relationships in civil law and economic ethics as well as in theology. It starts from the German word for debt and guilt relationships Schuldverhältnisse. The German term Schuld does not distinguish between debt and...

This paper starts with the observation that the United States and Europe, both members of the family of “western-type-modern societies”, should (according to the still prevailing theories of modernization) follow the same pattern of development including secularization. They obviously...

This paper is concerned with distributions of income and the ordering of related Lorenz curves. By introducing appropriate preference relations on the set of Lorenz curves, two altenative axiomatic characterization of Lorenz curve orderings are proposed. Moreover, the Gini coefficient is...

Intergenerational justice arises from the fact that generations stand towards each other in a relationship of obligation. Children owe their existence to their parents, and therefore the continuation of their own existence in children of the next generation. Self interest demands the constant...

This paper is concerned with the problem of ranking Lorenz curves in situations where the Lorenz curves intersect and no unambiguous ranking can be attained witout introducing weaker ranking criteria than first-degree Lorenz dominance. To deal with such situations two alternative sequences of...

The Social Market Economy has been seen as a third path between capitalism and socialism shaped by the principle of solidarity. The rhetoric of the third way can be mere mediation as indecisiveness or the consequence of a third conception of the economic order. Solidarism and personalism as the...

The origin of evil is one of the great puzzles of philosophy and theology. Evil is no objective of the world order since there can be no objective to fail to meet an objective. To assume that evil is part of the world order would, however, imply to assume that there is an objective to fail an...

Das Leitbild der Wirtschafts-und Sozialordnung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, die Soziale Markwirtschaft, wird durch die Idee des sozialen Ausgleichs von Einkommensunterschieden durch die progressive Besteuerung, durch die umlagefinanzierte Altersvorsorge, durch die Mitbestimmung der...