We employ a novel approach for analyzing the effects of relative consumption and relative wealth preferences on both the decentralized and the socially optimal economic growth rates. In the pertinent literature these effects are usually assessed by examining the dependence of the growth rates on...

During the last decades, German industrial relations have undergone significant changes leading to a partial erosion and fragmentation of collective bargaining as well - and more fundamentally - to a significant change in power relations and the weakening of trade unions. As a result, wage...