The continuing discussion about the future of the social market economy is producing new headlines daily with detailed suggestions for the restructuring of our economic and socio-political system. A fundamental conceptional analysis of this subject has however not been done up to the present....

"Soziale Marktwirtschaft" (Social Market Economy) is the economic order that was established in Western Germany after 1945. It is not a precisely outlined theoretical system but more a cipher for a "mélange" of socio-political ideas for a free and socially just society and some general rules of...