Princeton Professor Markus Brunnermeier and former IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard discuss the impact of the current global health crisis on public finances and policy responses. Blanchard proposes a three-step approach: infection-fighting, disaster relief, aggregate demand management. “In normal recessions, we have to worry about just the third. Here the first two dominate,” he argues.
On Monday, April 6, Olivier Blanchard joined the Bendheim Center for Finance for a seminar on how Covid-19 has impacted the global economy—and what it will take to recover from this unprecedented crisis.
Olivier Blanchard joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics as the first C. Fred Bergsten Senior Fellow in October 2015. A citizen of France, Blanchard has spent most of his professional life in Cambridge, MA. After obtaining his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977, he taught at Harvard University, and returned to MIT in 1982. He was chair of the economics department from 1998 to 2003. In 2008, he took a leave of absence to be the economic counselor and director of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund
The event began with a brief discussion by Markus Brunnermeier, Director of the Bendheim Center for Finance. Both Brunnermeier and Blanchard took from the audience throughout the event.
You can download the full slide deck here.
Also, read Olivier Blanchard’s recent ProMarket post:
You might also find interesting this lecture, which Blanchard mentions during the webinar:
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