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The 'Wicksellian heritage' is often claimed when central banks target low inflation rates by
acting upon short-term real rates of interest. This type of policymaking is not the best way to
describe the Bank of France's monetary policy during the interwar years and afterwards.
However, some French economists worked in the Wicksellian footsteps when proposing a
monetary policy framework under an unconvertible paper money system which aims at
stability of prices by way of a two interest rates gap dynamics.
The present paper proposes a reconstruction of a hitherto unknown French Wicksellian
connection by way of the contributions of Jacques Rueff (1953) and Jacques Le Bourva (1958
and 1962). Such a Wicksellian connection is interesting in two ways: first, it demonstrates to
what extent a unorthodox analysis existed in France; and second, it helps to understand the
French monetary policymaking and the practical changes that happened after WWII.
