Essays on nominal rigidities, real frictions and monetary policy.

Summary The purpose of this thesis is to use modern tools of structural macroeconomics to answer a set of monetary questions. Price and wage rigidities as well as real frictions in the labor market are examined from different angles. In the first chapter, we take a purely positive approach to the evaluation of structural models. In the second chapter, we focus on the evaluation of monetary policy within the framework of models of the New Neoclassical Synthesis. In the third chapter, a new evaluation of the stylized facts proposed by the SVAR literature concerning the effects of a monetary policy shock on the economy is carried out. In the last chapter, we focus on real frictions in the labor market. We use a purely normative approach to assess the welfare cost of these real frictions in a monetary union.