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[German Version] (Macroeconomic Accounting). Macroeconomic accounting includes several part-calculations that represent the economy of an entire country or individual states of a federal republic for a certain period. At the center stand the calculation of the production, distribution and exploitation of the Gross National Product (GNP) and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and an account of the redistribution ¶ and wealth-creation processes of a past period. The GDP is regarded as an important measure of production, and the GNP of inc…

[German Version] (Ger. Tarifautonomie: free collective bargaining) means that conditions of employment, including pay scales, are established by the parties to a contract without state intervention. In Germany it is constitutionally protected by the freedom of association guaranteed by Basic Law art. 9; its primary legal embodiment is in the collective bargaining act. Collective agreements can be made between an employers’ association and a trade union (industry-wide contract) or between an employe…

[German Version] A basic function of the liberal state is to enable people to enjoy maximum freedom for the best possible exercise of their opportunities to live self-determined lives. The requirement of free decision also implies freedom from constraints imposed by others in the economic sphere and leads to the system of a market economy. In this system, limits must be placed on the market that facilitate fair and socially just results. The freedom to enter into contracts must not be used as a we…

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[German Version] The gross national product (GNP) represents the most important statistical measure of a country's production of goods. The official statistics of the EU use the concept of national income. The gross national product includes goods produced by nationals both domestically and abroad. Another frequently used index of production is the …

[German Version] as income from enterprise activity results from sales after subtracting all costs (including personal use). Profit raises the capacity; losses…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies There are two basic types of interaction between trade and religion: trade growing out of the practice of religion and religious phenomena as by-products of trade. Only in exceptional cases do both have equal weight. Trade can arise from the need for sacrificial offerings, as well as for special vestments and regalia for religious specialists and other officiants, and not least the need to feed participants in religious events. Special foods required by the relig…

[German Version] The main pillars of Germany’s social security system are the benefits guaranteeing basic subsistence for the unemployed who are not eligible for unemployment insurance, family support, and statutory social security. As basic security, needy individuals unable to work receive social assistance (formerly called social welfare); needy individuals who are able to work receive unemployment benefit II …

[German Version] The resources available fo…

[German Version] One can protect oneself against the risks of life through personal provision or by acquiring private insurance. Given freedom of choice the individual will decide for the insurance if the costs of covering a certain risk are less than bearing the costs directly. In private insurance, premiums are determi…

[German Version] refers to short-term variations in the capacity of the productive potential of the overall economy. Economic development proceeds in waves with upturns and downturns. In an upturn, demand increases rapidly. The capacity of the …

[German Version] is now almost universally recognized as a global necessity demanding the participation of individual states. It has been anchored in German law as a state responsibility since 1994: “The state, in responsibility for future generations, protects the natural foundations for life in the context of the constitutional order.…” (Basic Law, art. 20a). It is a task for politics to establish environmental goals for individual environmental media and pollutants appropriate to the demand that the natural foundations for life be protected and it must take appropriate measures to attain these objectives. Because environmental protection is costly, there is always conflict between economy and ecology (Environment/Ecology, Ecological movement). The state must balance these considerations. The appropriate juristic criterion for the solution of the scarcity conflict is the unassailability of the essential content of a fundamental right and the proportionality of the state's means. The fundamental right to the protection of the natural foundations for life is not open to question in its essential content. From this proposition derives the duty of the constitutional state to protect individual citizens from essential damages to the environment. The classic instrument for realizing this protective objective is defense against environmental threats. It aims to ensure an “ecological minimum for existence” and relates primarily to the protection of health. The right to life and physical inviolability has prominent status in the Basic Law's order of values so that any violation of this right is classified as fundamental. Defe…

[German Version] Social security has a long history in Germany. The golden age of social legislation was the end of the Bismarck era. The year 1883 saw the introduction of statutory health insurance, followed by accident insurance in 1884 and disability and old age insurance in 1889 (Security, Social). Social changes associated with the breakdown of the traditi…

[German Version] I. The natural environment is the living space for human beings, animals and plants. It provides certain life-support systems. Every living being r…

[German Version] Productivity is determined by relating the quantitative outcome of production to the production factors employed. In partial productivities, the output is related to one production factor (work, capital, resources or energy productivity). In total productivity, the output is related to the sum of applied factors, in each case weighted with factor costs. Marginal productivity means an increase in production output where one factor is raised by a small amount. Productivity indexes a…

[German Version] There are many international environmental agreements, indicating the efforts of the international community of nations to preserve nature (Environment/Ecology) in its substance as part …

[German Version] prevails, from the perspective of economics, whenever everyone fit for work who seeks a job for which he or she is qualified at the customary market wage finds a position. Full employment, in this sense, means the absence of involuntary unemploy-¶ ment. Because economic conditions change continuously and work forces exchange jobs and come anew to the labor market, and because matches take time, there is always a certain degree of (frictional) unemployment. This unemployment can be reconciled with full employment. In practical economic policy, there is no legal…

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