Alan Blinder

Alan S. Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where he founded the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies. He is also Vice Chairman of the Promontory Interfinancial Network. Dr. Blinder served as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from June 1994 until January 1996. In this position, he represented the Fed at various international meetings, and was a member of the Board's committees on Bank Supervision and Regulation, Consumer and Community Affairs, and Derivative Instruments. He also chaired the Board in the Chairman's absence. He speaks frequently to financial audiences. Before becoming a member of the Board, Dr. Blinder served as a Member of President Clinton's original Council of Economic Advisers from January 1993 until June 1994. There he was in charge of the Administration's macroeconomic forecasting and also worked intensively on budget, international trade, and health care issues. During the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, he was an Economic Adviser to Al Gore and John Kerry. He also served briefly as Deputy Assistant Director of the Congressional Budget Office when that agency started in 1975, and testifies frequently before Congress on a wide variety of public policy issues. Dr. Blinder was born on October 14, 1945, in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his A.B. at Princeton University in 1967, M.Sc. at London School of Economics in 1968, and Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971 – all in economics. Dr. Blinder has taught at Princeton since 1971, and chaired the Department of Economics from 1988 to 1990. Dr. Blinder is the author or co-author of 17 books, including the textbook Economics: Principles and Policy (with William J. Baumol), now in its 10th edition, from which over two million college students have learned introductory economics. He has also written scores of scholarly articles on such topics as fiscal policy, monetary policy, and the distribution of income. From 1985 until joining the Clinton Administration, Dr. Blinder wrote a lively monthly column in Business Week magazine. Currently, he is a columnist for The New York Times Sunday business section, a regular commentator on PBS’s Nightly Business Report, and appears frequently on CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg TV, and elsewhere. Dr. Blinder was previously President of the Eastern Economic Association and Vice President of the American Economic Association. He is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, the Bellagio Group, and the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former Governor of the American Stock Exchange. Dr. Blinder also serves on academic advisory panels for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Bank for International Settlements, the FDIC Center for Financial Research, and the Hamilton Project. He has been elected to the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.