Les effets du taux d'intérêt réel sur l'activité en France

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of the effects of an exogeneous real interest rate shock on the French economy. We used two vectorial autoregressive models and analysed the dynamics of the impulse response functions. The first model is built with real variables and the second is in nominal terms with a cointegra- tion relation where the cointegrating term is the real interest rate. Our results suggest that a real interest rate shock is an inflationary shock and that inflation has a depressing impact on economic activity. These results support a theory of business cycle based on the « customer market » hypothesis against the ones based on competitive and oligopolistic pricing.