In this lecture, co-sponsored by CIGI and The Balsillie School of International Affairs, Olivier Blanchard will analyze the forces behind the weak recovery, discuss what may lay ahead, and the policies needed to strengthen growth and decrease risks.
Olivier 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 labor market and the determinants of unemployment, to transition in former communist countries, and to forces behind the current crisis. In the process, he has worked with numerous countries and international organizations. He is the author of many books and articles, including two textbooks in macroeconomics, one at the graduate level with Stanley Fischer, one at the undergraduate level. The 6th edition of the undergraduate textbook is coauthored with David Johnson, from Wilfrid Laurier University
A citizen of France, Olivier Blanchard has spent most of his professional life in Cambridge, U.S. After obtaining his Ph.D in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977, he taught at Harvard University, returning to MIT in 1982, with whom he has been affiliated since then. He is the Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics, and past Chair of the Economics Department. He has been on leave from MIT since 2008, as Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund.