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...

In the euro area, there is mixed evidence that the GDP per capita of lower-income economies has been catching up with that of higher-income economies since the start of monetary union. The significant real convergence performance of some of the most recent members contrasts with that of the...

This paper investigates the growth composition and convergence of the annual GNI in the EU-28 from 1995 until 2016. To do so, we computed a growth accounting exercise to estimate the contribution of labor, capital and TFP when assuming the same production function for all the EU-28. Also, we...

In the euro area, there is mixed evidence that the GDP per capita of lower-income economies has been catching up with that of higher-income economies since the start of monetary union. The significant real convergence performance of some of the most recent members contrasts with that of the...

The ECB monetary policy has been criticised for giving more attention to price stabilisation in Europe rather than encouraging higher growth and employment. It is now largely accepted that the Maastricht norms and the Stability Pact have imposed serious macroeconomic constraints on economic...

This study estimates the rate and distance to convergence of WAMZ Member States and provides a comparative analysis of nominal and real convergence to evaluate WAMZ's preparedness for monetary integration. We employ monthly data on the consumer price index and nominal exchange rate from January...

After presenting the institutional construction during the pre-accession and post-accession to the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the exchange rate mechanisms (ERM) in several countries and the convergence criteria, we go on with a brief analysis of the way the CEE countries cope with the...