Monetary Policy and Credit Policy During France's Golden Age, 1945-1973

摘要

My dissertation studies the policy of the French central bank (Banque de France) from 1945 to the early 1970s, during the so-called Golden Age of European growth (Crafts and Toniolo 1995; Eichengreen 2006). Contrary to the common view which describesthis policy as passive and only determined by fiscal policy objectives, I show that central bank's actions were decisive in maintaining mild inflation as well as in easing access to credit and fostering investment and production growth.Two main features are very important to understand the policy of the Banque de France—and more generally of European central banks—during this period. First, it relied on the direct management of quantities of money and credit (quantitative controls) rather than on their prices (interest rates). Second, credit policy, banking regulation, and monetary policy were constantly intertwined.