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The choice of the intermediate target in an overdraft economy In recent years, monetary authorities in implementing their policies have selected different monetary or financial aggregates for targetting. This paper studies the consequences of the choice of different financial aggregates as intermediate targets in an overdraf economy : (1) the money stock and the domestic financial assets, (2) their connterpart including financing of the government delit (the domestic counterpart of the central money stock, of the money stock and total domestic assets), (3) their counterpart without incliiding government debts (refinancing of banks by the Central Bank, banks' credit and private domestic borrowing). Only simples rides are considered like : the monetary authorities increase the interest rate iclien the demand for the aggregate increases. The paper pays a special attention to the link between the choice of the financial aggregate and the ability of the corresponding interest rate rule to stabilize output and foreign exchange reserves when the economy faces different shocks on demand, income, domestic and foreign assets demands. Section I links our analysis to Poole's seminal article and to the vocabulary introduced by B. Friedman. A simple model of an overdraft economy with fixed exchanged rates and imperfect capital mobility is presented in Section II. It allates us to compare the elasticity of the financial aggregates towards the interest rate and to appraise the sabilizing properties of the interest rate rules according to the intermediate target and he kind of the shock. Then we compare ex post transmission on output and reserves when the financial targets are reached, to the optimal policy and to the passive policy (no reaction). This gives some highlights on the choice of the aggregate and on the danger of targetting. The paper shows that the control of the money stock or the control of the total amount of domestic financial assets are very often destabilizing or perverse for output and reserves (leaning with the wind). Monetary authorities should always better control the domestic loans of the financial sector (e.g. the domestic eounter­part of the money stock instead of the numey stock, total domestic credit instead for domestic financial assets). Theij Should better choose the counterparts exchlding the government debt as monetary targets, if they can control public expenditures and their financing. However, for each aggregate, it can be found shocks which induce the monetary policy to react in a perverse or destabilizing way.

A re-appraisal of mincer's earnings model Starting from rough measures of formal schooling and on the job training, the earning model proposed by J. Mincer (1974) suceed to explain a substantial proportion of the variance of individual earning. The explanatory power of the model can be significantly boosted by increasing the quality of the variables. In spite of the robustness of the model, the interpretation of the results is to be taken cautiously. These results can be derived from alternative theoretical hypothesis and namely to the one known as the filter hypothesis. It is shown that a specification of the earnings function consistent with the filter hypothesis is proced to be empirically supported in the explanation of the variance of the earnings. Furthermore, this specification helps to understand the changes with time in the impact of lob experience on earnings.

The role of statistics and political arthmetic in the economic methodology of Jean-Baptiste say. At the time of the ruptures The object of this article is to show the role that statistics and political arithmetic played in the methodological preoccupations of Jean-Baptiste Say. The latter was unable to conceal a real and considerable dilemma over these questions, a dilemma which manifested itself in hesitations, advances and ambiguities, indeed contradictions, and one which disclosed two large ambitions : the one scientific, to make of political economy the " supreme science " ; the other political, to make of the economist-who would take the place of the political arithmetician-the new and exclusive adviser to governments.