Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science Philip S. Khoury has announced the July 1 appointment of Dr. Olivier Blanchard, the Class of 1941 Professor, as head of the Department of Economics. Professor Blanchard succeeds Professor Paul Joskow, who has served as head of the Department since 1994 and who served as associate department head for a year before that.
"Professor Blanchard is one of the world's leading researchers in the field of macroeconomics and is one of the department's outstanding teachers," Dean Khoury said. "I very much look forward to working with him to strengthen the economics undergraduate program and maintain its PhD program's top national ranking."
Dr. Blanchard received the DES in economics from Paris in 1972 and the PhD in economics at MIT in 1977. He started his teaching career at MIT in 1983 as an associate professor and was appointed to full professor in 1985. From 1977-83, he taught economics at Harvard University and was Visiting Taussig Professor at Harvard in 1997-98.
In 1994, MIT selected Dr. Blanchard to be the Class of 1941 Professor. In 1996 the American Economic Association elected him its vice president. He was elected Fellow of the Econometrics Society in 1985 and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1990.
Dr. Blanchard has been coeditor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, one of the most prestigious journals in the field, since 1984. He has authored numerous books about European macroeconomics, and he is a prolific writer of articles related to macroeconomics theory and policy.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 2, 1998.
