Olivier Blanchard

Olivier Jean Blanchard is currently the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, a post he has held since September 1, 2008. He is also the Class of 1941 Professor of Economics at MIT, though he is currently on leave. Blanchard is one of the most cited economists in the world. Blanchard earned his Bachelors degree at Paris Dauphine University, and his Ph.D. in Economics in 1977 at MIT. He taught at Harvard university between 1977 and 1983, after which time he returned to MIT as a professor. Between 1998 and 2003 Blanchard served as the Chairman of the Economics Department at MIT. He is also an adviser for the Federal Reserve banks of Boston (since 1995) and New York (since 2004). Blanchard has published numerous research papers in the field of macroeconomics, as well as undergraduate and graduate macroeconomics textbooks. David Johnson is Professor of Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. Professor Johnson's areas of specialty are macroeconomics, international finance and the economics of education. He has an ongoing appointment as C.D. Howe Institute Education Policy Scholar. He most recently was Fulbright Scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara from January to June 2008. Professor Johnson received his undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto in 1978. He received his Masters degree from the University of Western Ontario and his PhD from Harvard University His published work includes the studies of Canada's international debts, the influence of American interest rates on Canadian interest rates, and the determination of the Canada-United States exchange rate as well as a comprehensive analysis of elementary school test scores in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He has also written on monetary policy in Canada and around the world, both on the goal of lower inflation and on the role of inflation targets. His teaching is in macroeconomics and international finance. He is co-author of Macroeconomics: Third Canadian Edition, an intermediate macroeconomics text. One specific teaching interest is in using spreadsheets to teach intermediate macroeconomics. . Before coming to Wilfrid Laurier in 1985, David worked for two years at the Bank of Canada. In 1990 he spent a year at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and in 1999 a year at the University of Cambridge in England. David Johnson lives in Waterloo, Ontario, with his wife Susan, also an economics professor. When not studying or teaching economics, he plays Oldtimers' Hockey in the winter and sculls in the summer.