A citizen of France, Olivier Blanchard has spent 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, where he has been since then. He is currently the Class of 1941 Professor of Economics, and the Chair of the Economics Department. He 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. 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. He is a fellow and Council member of the Econometric Society, a member of the American Academy of Sciences, and a member of the French Economic Advisory Council to the French Prime Minister.

Olivier Blanchard joined IZA as a Research Fellow in March 2001.