Olivier Jean Blanchard (; born December 27, 1948) is a French economist and professor who is a senior fellow at the

Peterson Institute for International Economics The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), known until 2006 as the Institute for International Economics (IIE), is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded by C. Fred Bergsten in 1981 and has been led b ...

. He was the chief economist at the

International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster glo ...

from September 1, 2008, to September 8, 2015. Blanchard was appointed to the position under the tenure of Dominique Strauss-Kahn; he was succeeded by

Maurice Obstfeld Maurice Moses "Maury" Obstfeld (born March 19, 1952) is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley and previously Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson ...

. He is also a Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics emeritus at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

(MIT). According to

IDEAS/RePEc Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in many countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, ...

, he is one of the most cited economists in the world.

Career

Blanchard graduated from ESCP in 1970. From 1970 to 1973, he completed graduate level courses in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics anal ...

and

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathemati ...

at Paris Dauphine University and Paris Nanterre University. He obtained a PhD in

from MIT in 1977 and then taught at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

between 1977 and 1983, after which time he returned to MIT as a professor. His areas of expertise in macroeconomics are the functions of monetary policy, the role of speculative bubbles, the determinants of unemployment and the role of the labor market as a whole, the effects on countries who have transitioned away from communism, and the factors that have sparked the most recent global financial crises. Between 1998 and 2003 Blanchard served as the chairman of the economics department at MIT. Blanchard has published numerous research papers in the field of

macroeconomics Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix ''makro-'' meaning "large" + ''economics'') is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. For example, using interest rates, taxes, and ...

, as well as undergraduate and graduate macroeconomics textbooks. In 1987, together with Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, Blanchard demonstrated the importance of

monopolistic competition Monopolistic competition is a type of imperfect competition such that there are many producers competing against each other, but selling products that are differentiated from one another (e.g. by branding or quality) and hence are not perfec ...

for the

aggregate demand In macroeconomics, aggregate demand (AD) or domestic final demand (DFD) is the total demand for final goods and services in an economy at a given time. It is often called effective demand, though at other times this term is distinguished. This is ...

multiplier. Most New Keynesian macroeconomic models now assume monopolistic competition for the reasons outlined by them. He is a fellow and past Council member of the

Econometric Society The Econometric Society is an international society of academic economists interested in applying statistical tools to their field. It is an independent organization with no connections to societies of professional mathematicians or statisticians. ...

, and a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

International Monetary Fund

During his tenure as chief economist, Blanchard's reshaped IMF policies. During the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

Blanchard supported global fiscal stimulus. During its slow recovery he urged a cautious removal of stimulus and advocated quantitative easing.

Austerity v. stimulus debate

By 2010, following the financial crisis, many countries ran significant budget deficits. There was a global turn to austerity as

Washington Consensus The Washington Consensus is a set of ten economic policy prescriptions considered to constitute the "standard" reform package promoted for crisis-wracked developing countries by Washington, D.C.-based institutions such as the International Mone ...

economists encouraged governments to cut spending and raise taxes to avoid a government debt crisis, as occurred in

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wi ...

. In June 2010, Blanchard and Carlo Cottarelli, the director of the IMF's fiscal affairs department, co-authored an IMF blog post entitled "Ten Commandments for Fiscal Adjustment in Advanced Economies." By 2011

Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was t ...

noted that Blanchard was already "suggesting that harsh austerity programs may be literally self-defeating, hurting the economy so much that they worsen fiscal prospects." Krugman thinks that by 2012, every country that had introduced "significant austerity" had suffered economically, and that Blanchard had issued "what amounted to a ''mea culpa''." According to Krugman, "the IMF now believes that it massively understated the damage that spending cuts inflict on a weak economy." On the other hand, the IMF under Blanchard in 2014 was forced to admit that it had overestimated the negative effects of austerity – the IMF had warned of low growth because the British government did not spend enough, but in the end, the British economy grew much larger than the IMF had predicted. IMF-head Christine Lagarde apologized to the British government for the mistake.

Inequality

Under Blanchard's tenure at IMF, Jonathan D. Ostry and Andy Berg published their findings that "inequality was detrimental to sustained growth." By April 2014, in the World Economic Outlook, Blanchard situated inequality as a "central issue" for "macroeconomic developments."

References

External links

Olivier Blanchard's webpage at the Peterson Institute for International Economics
, - {{DEFAULTSORT:Blanchard, Olivier 1948 births 20th-century French economists 21st-century French economists ESCP Europe alumni Expatriate academics in the United States Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the Econometric Society French academics French officials of the United Nations Harvard University faculty International Monetary Fund people Labor economists Living people Macroeconomists MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty New Keynesian economists Paris Dauphine University alumni People from Amiens Peterson Institute for International Economics Presidents of the American Economic Association