Within the economic profession, it is a widely held view that the fiscal criteria of the Maastricht treaty are arbitrary numbers without economic foundation. Much of this criticism seems to overlook an important aspect - the strategic dimension of the criteria. This paper focuses on one...

We investigate the incentives of manufacturers to use resale price maintenance (RPM) when selling products through common retailers. In our model retailers provide product specific pre-sales services. If the competitive retail margins are low, each manufacturer fixes a minimum price to induce...