Olivier Blanchard

IMF, on leave from MIT

Olivier Blanchard is the IMF's Chief Economist (Economic Counsellor and Director, Research Department) and Professor of Economics at MIT, having taught previously at Harvard. His research interests are in macroeconomics, including a wide set of issues that range from the role of monetary policy to the nature of speculative bubbles, to the nature of the labour market and the determinants of unemployment, to transition in former communist countries. He is the author of many books and articles, including two textbooks in macroeconomics, one at the graduate level with Stanley Fischer and one at the undergraduate level. He is a Fellow and Council member of the Econometric Society, a past vice president of the American Economic Association, a member of the American Academy of Sciences, and a member of the French Economic Advisory Council to the French Prime Minister. He obtained his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1977.