Contenu du sommaire : Théorie et politique monétaires

The information content of french monetary aggregates Christian Bordes, Michael Driscoll, Garby Mac Donald The main purpose of this paper is to examine the information that current and pafit values of alternative monetary aggregates contain regarding nominal incarne and prices in France over the period 1970-1982. The information content of the current targeted monetary aggregate, M 2 R, is evaluated alsongside a number of alternative aggregates including currency in circulation, the monetary base, some wide measure of money and credit aggregates. Currency in circulation, the main component of the monetary base, has the highest information content. M 2 R provides no additional information to that contained in the past values of income and prices, which is a feature of credit aggregates also. The paper also contains a review of the criteria used to choose between alternative measures of money and credit.

Credit rationing and firms reactions Patrick Artus In that article, a complete rnodel of firms' behaviour is estimated in order to analyse their reactions when they are rationed on the domestic credit market. In that situation, they can reduce their inventories, investment, money holdings, dividende, wage bill : increase their prices and credit demand in foreign currencies. The use of estimation techniques for markets in desequilibrium permits to have an idea of the intensity of those various reactions.

Uncoordinated prices and monetary policy Torben M. Andersen The paper considers coordination problems and the role for monetary policiy within a setting where the traditional assumption of instantaneous market clearing (costless coordination) is given up in favour of a more realistic setting where price decisions arc made by numerous agents (firms) acting independently on their private (decentralized) information. Disequilibrium phenomene or coordination probleme arise in this context frorn the fact that price decisions are not coordinated and therefore not nt'ccesarily mutually consistent. An environment with real shocks to Costa and dernund is analysed, and monetary policy is considered as a means to overcome the coordination problems. It iv shown that (a) a systematic monetary policy if non-neutral. (b) monetary policy can reduce the implications of differential information and uncoordinated prices, but (c) even under an optimal policy there is a systematic output loss as compared to the full current information case.

Monetary policy and its effects on inflation M. Badrul Haque Sargent and Wallace [1981] use a hyperinflation model to challenge the ability of the Central Bank to exert a desired influence on the path of inflation either in the transition period or in the steady state when the gocernment budget constraint is explicit. The game is to show that even in a Monetarist model it is the stance of fiscal policy which ultimately matters in the fight against inflation. Nevertheless, the formulation is vulnerable to two distinct criticisms. First, asset demands are poorly motivated. Second, the hyperinflation model ignores the effect of movements in real output and their effect on money demand. The formulation we present has the virtue that such changes could be simultaneously analysed, in addition to providing Sidrauski-type microfoundations. An additional source of richness in our formulation is that agents have to form expectations on the prospect of capital gains on outstanding bond holdings. The specification of fixed nominal or indexed coupon values on bonds is an important dimension to the problems in which we are interested. In this papers, we illustrate the circumstances under which the Central Bank can exert a desired influence on inflation path using monetary policy on its own, and provide expositions of the original Sargent and Wallace results.

The international transmission of monetary shocks into flexible changes François Chevallier, Jean-Paul Pollin The proposal of this article is to demonstrate that flexible changes cannot stop the international transmission of monetary shocks at short term. A model has been constructed into which the monetary policies are isolated one from the other at long term, and their interdependance has been studied into the process adjustment. This article leads us to two basic results which were not obvious a priori : ― On the one hand the transmission of exterior monetary shocks does only depend on the lack of neutnility in foreign economy (which is at the origin of the shock). ― On the other hand, the analysis of transitory shocks mode by the monetary impulses does not show competition of interest between national economy and foreign one. That mcan.s thut the monetary impulses operate into the same way for both economies, on the totality of considered variables.

Imperfect segmentation, dual exchange markets and rational expectations Bernard Decaluwe. Jagdeev S. Bhandari The dual exchange rate system with a regulated market reserved for the only commercial transaction and a free market in which the circulation of money pass in transit, does in practice neither offer a complete segmentation (legal junctions does exist between markets). nor a complete tightness (presence of illegal junctions). Starting from this reality reported by this paper, sticked to the performance analysis of such a system restricted to a small open economy with rational anticipations and in which dynamic asset is generated at once by the accumulation of exchange reserves by the Central Bank, and by one of the currency assets by private sectors, the last one beeing only possible thanks to the imperfect partitioning of markets. This article shows, through impact reactions of economy to different exogenous shocks, that this system of mixed exchanges will be very close to a pure system of fixed or flexible exchanges according more or less to the strong step of markets partitioning.