The paper reviews and evaluates in a non-technical manner the economic and political arguments for and against the two fiscal convergence criteria written into the Treaty of Maastricht and its Protocols. In order to qualify for full membership in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), net general...

The paper develops a two-country endogenous growth model to investigate possible causes for the existence and persistence of productivity growth differentials between nations, even though these countries show a common technology, constant returns to scale and perfect international capital...