Alan Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He previously served as co-director of Princeton’s Center for Economic Policy Studies, which he founded in 1989. From June 1994 to January 1996, Blinder served as vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He also served as a member of President Bill Clinton’s first Council of Economic Advisers, where he was in charge of the Administration’s macroeconomic forecasting and also worked intensively on budget, international trade, and health care issues. He was as an economic advisor to Al Gore and John Kerry during the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. He served briefly as Deputy Assistant Director of the Congressional Budget Office when that agency began in 1975, and testifies frequently before Congress on a wide variety of public policy issues.
Blinder has written extensively on macroeconomic policies, central banking, and free trade. His latest book, After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead, was released in 2013. Blinder’s works also include Offshoring of American Jobs: What Response from U.S. Economic Policy?, The Quiet Revolution: Central Banking Goes Modern, Downsizing in America: Reality, Causes, and Consequences, The Fabulous Decade: Macroeconomic Lessons from the 1990s, Central Banking in Theory and Practice, and Hard Heads, Soft Hearts: Tough Minded Economics for a Just Society. More than two million economics students have used his textbook, Economics: Principles and Policy, now in its 11th edition, written with William J. Baumol.
Blinder has been an authoritative voice on the government’s role in economic matters. From 1985 until joining the Clinton Administration, Dr. Blinder wrote a monthly column in Business Week magazine. He has written for the New York Times and contributes frequently for the Wall Street Journal. He also makes frequent appearances on PBS, CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg TV, and elsewhere.
