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by employing -and -convergence techniques complemented by a time series analysis. Overall our results highlight a distinctive convergence pattern in the European Union. Fiscal discipline leading to a fast convergence of deficit/GDP ratio over the 1990s markedly weakened in the following decade. Nonetheless, after the Euro debut a pronounced convergence in total revenue and total government spending emerges, with different patterns characterizing each expenditure component. Despite this evidence of fiscal harmonization, European treaties failed to attract countries toward a common share of government debt over GDP. (JEL E61, H11, C23)

This paper assesses whether there might be complementarities between different types of innovation activities (product, process and organizational) and how these effects may be linked to the likelihood that a firm will export. Complementarity is addressed through the properties of supermodular functions, and firm heterogeneity by export destination is explored. A new econometric strategy to test for pairwise complementarity in a function with three independent variables and a binary dependent variable is proposed. Exogenous and endogenous innovation variables are considered by using bootstrapping for hypothesis testing, propensity score matching and treatment effects models. The empirical analysis shows that complementarity relationships between innovation strategies are more likely to exist when firms export to multiple foreign markets.

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