MNB panel discussion with Olivier Blanchard

A citizen of France, Olivier Blanchard has spent his professional life in Cambridge, U.S. After obtaining his PhD in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977, he taught at Harvard University, returning to MIT in 1982, where he has been since then. He is the Class of 1941 Professor of Economics, and a former Chair of the Economics Department. He is currently on leave from MIT, as Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. Mr. Blanchard is a macroeconomist, who has worked on a wide set of issues, 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. In the process, he has worked with numerous countries and international organisations. He is the author of many books and articles, including two textbooks on 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, and a member of the American Academy of Sciences.