Guest editor's introduction

Citation

Backhaus, J. (2006), "Guest editor's introduction", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 33 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jes.2006.00233caa.001

Guest editor's introduction

When the social question was originally posed by Bismarck, the answers given by the economics profession as it then was led to the creation of the welfare state in Germany. The welfare state was originally built on market principles. In Britain, the social question was posed as well, but received its answer later than in Germany, and differently. Here, it was Lord Beveridge with his “Full employment in a free society” (Beveridge, 1944) whose design was largely followed there, but later also elsewhere, such as in the Netherlands, to a degree in the USA and ultimately even in Germany. Today, the institutions that have partly evolved and partly been created which make up the welfare state have reached the limits of what they can deliver and need to be re-designed. It is for this reason that posing the social question again is not only of historical interest, but it is also rather of eminent current interest with respect to economic and social policy.

The essays collected in this special issue of the Journal of Economic Studies deal with the social question in both historical and contemporary perspective. Peter Senn offers a study of the periodical literature in English on economics and the social question. Karl-Heinz Schmidt takes a long-term view of the social question in Germany in both the nineteenth and the twentieth century. Günther Chaloupek presents the Austrian view and the approaches of the Austrian school to the social question before WWI with a special emphasis on von Wieser and Böhm-von Bawerk. In contrast, Marcel van Meerhaeghe concisely presents Bismarck and the social question. As the German literature had its impact in Japan, it is interesting to see Shigenari Kanamori's contrast of typical examples of social questions in Germany and Japan, one example being the weavers. Still with respect to Japan, Norio Sasaki re-examines the welfare state from an institutional perspective. Alexander Ebner re-examines the concept of the German social market economy, which is followed by Hans Frambach's re-examination of Schmoller's answers to the social question with respect to labor. Finally, Joaquim Ramos Silva concludes this collection of essays with a European restatement of the social question and possible answers.

Jürgen BackhausUniversity of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany

ReferenceBeveridge, W.H. (1944), Full Employment In A Free Society, Unwin, Woking.