Olivier Blanchard

Who is Olivier Blanchard?

Olivier Jean Blanchard is the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, a post he has held since September 1, 2008. He was appointed to this position under the tenure of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He is also the Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics at MIT, though he is now on leave at the IMF. Blanchard is one of the most cited economists in the world, according to IDEAS/RePEc.

Blanchard earned his Bachelor at Paris Dauphine University, and Ph.D. in Economics in 1977 at MIT. He taught at Harvard University between 1977 and 1983, after which time he returned to MIT as a professor. Between 1998 and 2003 Blanchard served as the Chairman of the Economics Department at MIT. He has also been an adviser for the Federal Reserve banks of Boston and New York.

Blanchard has published numerous research papers in the field of macroeconomics, as well as undergraduate and graduate macroeconomics textbooks.

In 1987, together with Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, Blanchard demonstrated the importance of monopolistic competition for the aggregate demand multiplier. Most New Keynesian macroeconomic models now assume monopolistic competition for the reasons outlined by them.