Politique monétaire et prix d'actifs

The objective of this article is to collect the conclusions of the studies concerning the optimal behavior of central banks towards asset prices. At first, the analysis leads to discuss the numerous uncertainties that monetary authorities should face in case of an integration of an asset price target in their monetary policy rule. Then, this study estimates the way the authors of which take into account lessons of the asymmetric transmission channels of asset prices to the real sphere (financial accelerator and bank capital channel essentially). When it is case, it appears that the behavior of monetary authorities should be conditional in the financial context. So, monetary policy could act in a preventive way by trying to resolve financial imbalance when the agents? balance sheets are initially degraded (and only in that case). Nevertheless, it remains to prove that monetary policy is more effective than prudential policy in prevention.