person
Olivier Blanchard
French-American economist (b. 1948). Principal institutional voice of the New Keynesian program through textbook authorship, MIT teaching, and the IMF chief-economist position (2008–2015).
Stub.
Olivier Blanchard’s long career at MIT (1983–2015) produced the principal graduate textbook bridging the Old Keynesian and New Keynesian frameworks (Lectures on Macroeconomics, 1989, with Stanley Fischer) and one of the standard intermediate texts (Macroeconomics, multiple editions). His chief-economist tenure at the IMF (2008–2015) made him the principal real-time New Keynesian voice during the post-2008 policy reconstruction; his post-IMF Peterson Institute work on fiscal policy at the zero lower bound has been influential on the post-crisis fiscal-policy reassessment.
Most recently associated with the argument that fiscal policy is more powerful than the pre-2008 New Keynesian consensus had suggested when interest rates are persistently low — a position partly absorbed into the post-pandemic policy frame.