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La règle monétaire de McCallum revue à la lumière de la méthodologie de Litterman

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  • Racette, Daniel

    (Institut d’économie appliquée, École des Hautes Études Commerciales)

  • Raynauld, Jacques

    (Institut d’économie appliquée, École des Hautes Études Commerciales)

  • Lauzon, Simon

    (Institut d’économie appliquée, École des Hautes Études Commerciales)

Abstract

Since the abandonment of monetary targeting by the Central Banks of major industrial nations, McCallum's rule has attracted renewed attention in the macroeconomic literature. Both McCallum and his critics have investigated the stabilizing properties of the rule and its robustness across regimes and models. In this paper, we adopt the same pragmatic view and seek to discover some unknown empirical properties of McCallum's rule by using a methodology that blends a BVAR model of the U.S. economy to the theory of optimal control (Litterman, 1987). Our results indicate that i. the monetary base is a rather weak instrument of U.S. monetary policy; ii. its use to stabilize nominal income leads to large fluctuations in the other variables of the system subjecting the whole exercise to the Lucas critique; iii. that optimal control analysis can be used to investigate marginally different configurations of McCallum's rule that have better overall stabilizing properties. Depuis l’abandon du contrôle des agrégats monétaires par les grandes banques centrales, la règle de McCallum a attiré une attention soutenue dans la littérature macroéconomique. Tant McCallum que ses critiques ont tenté de cerner le caractère stabilisateur de la règle et sa robustesse sous différents régimes et modèles. Dans cet article, nous adoptons une vision pragmatique et tentons de mettre en lumière des facettes empiriques méconnues de la règle de McCallum en utilisant une méthodologie qui allie judicieusement l’utilisation d’un modèle BVAR de l’économie américaine et la théorie du contrôle optimal (Litterman, 1987). Nos résultats montrent i. que la base monétaire est un instrument relativement anémique de la politique monétaire américaine; ii. que son utilisation pour stabiliser le revenu nominal peut mener à des fluctuations difficilement acceptables de l’ensemble des autres variables du système et est donc sujette à la critique de Lucas; iii. qu’il est possible, à l’aide du contrôle optimal, de pousser l’analyse de la règle et de trouver de nouvelles configurations qui ont de meilleures propriétés stabilisatrices des variables objectifs.

Suggested Citation

  • Racette, Daniel & Raynauld, Jacques & Lauzon, Simon, 1992. "La règle monétaire de McCallum revue à la lumière de la méthodologie de Litterman," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 68(1), pages 262-282, mars et j.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:actuec:v:68:y:1992:i:1:p:262-282
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    References listed on IDEAS

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