Politique monétaire, stabilité macroéconomique et changement structurel

This paper is dedicated at reconsidering objectives and instruments of monetary policy and also at redefining a policy mix in an economy which is systematically confronted to imbalances due to changes in technology, in the composition of demand or in the distribution of income, It is motivated by the policy failures as revealed both by the poor growth performances during the two last decades in Europe and by the difficulty of elaborating a strategy to way out from the on-going crisis. A critical assessment of DGSE models, which are the theoretical basis for the monetary policy currently carried out by central banks, is the starting point for reconsidering the nature of fluctuations and giving arguments in favour of an out-of-equilibrium approach. This approach focuses on the distortions in the structure of productive capacity induced by any structural change, and shows why and how the time inconsistency between the construction and the utilization phases of the production process has a monetary and a financial counterpart that may generate a global instability. In this perspective, instruments and objectives of monetary policy must be revised, which implies that several indicators of the performance of the economy must ne taken into account, arbitrages between conflicting objectives must be carried out, and some inertia must be privileged in reaction to current price and unemployment signals.