This paper argues that the traditional social contract that underlies the free market economy has run its course and needs to be replaced by a new contract, based on a new conception of the “empowering economy.” Whereas different social contracts are relevant to different societies, all...

Globalization has entered a new stage, with new and varying constellations of winners and losers and thus, calls for a new policy paradigm. In contrast to the traditional way of thinking - the welfare state redistributes purchasing power to the disadvantaged to support them in the event of...

The thesis analyzes monetary and labor policies under different market frictions. In the first part several versions of a microfounded dynamic general equilibrium model with monopolistic competitors in the product and/or labor market are derived and simulated. First of all, the monetary...