Although a citizen of France, Dr. Olivier Jean Blanchard has spent most of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After obtaining his PhD in economics from MIT in 1977, he taught at Harvard University, returning to MIT in 1982. He was chair of the economics department from 1998 to 2003. In 2008, Dr. Blanchard took a leave of absence to be the Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Since October 2015, he is the Fred Bergsten Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in Washington. He also remains Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics emeritus.

Dr. Blanchard has worked on a wide set of macroeconomic issues, from the role of monetary policy, to the nature of the labor market and the determinants of unemployment, to transition in former communist countries, to the nature of speculative bubbles, and to forces behind the recent global crisis. In the process, Olivier has worked with numerous international organizations and countries. He is the writer of many articles and books, including a graduate level book with Dr. Stanley Fischer.

Olivier is also a past editor of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and founding editor of the AEJ Macroeconomics. He is a fellow and past council member of the Econometric Society, a past vice president of the American Economic Association, and a member of the American Academy of Sciences.