The influence of money in economic fluctuations: empirical evaluation and theoretical foundations.

Summary The first part deals with the work that has led to the resurgence of the debate on the sources of economic fluctuations: we present and assess the scope of this work, which questions the influence of money on economic fluctuations. The second part provides new empirical evidence on the influence of monetary shocks in the economic activity of the main OECD countries, without however proposing a theoretical explanation of these effects. Finally, the third part focuses on the economic mechanisms that can account for the importance of monetary shocks in economic fluctuations.