As the euro is on its second decade, the European sovereign debt crisis and the ever more evident disparities in competitiveness among member states are prompting many to question whether monetary union is bringing more benefits than costs. The optimum currency area (OCA) theory provides a...

The public finance constraints introduced by the Maastricht Treaty have been subject to numerous debates among economists. Balassone and Franco (2000) pointed out, for instance, that the fulfillment of these constraints allows for fiscal discipline and flexibility and excludes any bias from an...

The literature identifies North-South disparities in Total Factor Productivity (TFP), which, in turn, justify the bulk of international income differences. By building a dynamic, general equilibrium model of North-South technological-knowledge diffusion with scale-invariant growth, we extend the...

We develop a general equilibrium endogenous growth model of a monetary union between two countries that differ in economic dimension and level of development. By solving transitional dynamics towards the steady state, we examine the impact of fiscal shocks that may lead to excessive deficits....

In this paper, we investigate the issues regarding the stabilization of public debt and its decrease down to 60 per cent of GDP for selected European Union countries using the primary balance derived from the public debt dynamic model as a leading indicator. We find that there is a high...

Within the debate that involves the application of a tax discipline in the EMU, some authors have questioned the adequacy of the use of the same tax rules for all the different member states, appealing to a more temporary tax flexibility for the small and less developed countries. For such...

Within the debate that involves the application of a tax discipline in the EMU, some authors have questioned the adequacy of the use of the same tax rules for all the different member states, appealing to a more temporary tax flexibility for the small and less developed countries. For such...

Considering an integrated area, this paper deals with the balance between the positive effects in the degree of economic cohesion resulting from R&D subsidies, temporarily granted from an imitator and less developed country, and the external negative effects arising from the eventual creation of...