Alan S. Blinder

About

Alan S. Blinder has been a member of the Princeton University faculty since 1971. He took a leave of absence from January 1993 through January 1996 to serve in the U.S. government, first as a member of President Clinton's original Council of Economic Advisers, and then as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He is an accomplished economist and author, with numerous academic writings, including books and articles, as well as a best-selling introductory textbook. Blinder has also contributed extensively to newspapers and magazines through columns and op-eds, and has been a regular columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and other media outlets. His professional leadership includes serving as President of the Eastern Economic Association and Vice President of the American Economic Association. He has been elected a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association and is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science, which awarded him the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize in October 2023. His recent publication, 'A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961–2021,' offers an authoritative account of sixty years of U.S. monetary and fiscal policy, drawing on his extensive firsthand experience and providing insights into macroeconomic policy spanning twelve presidents and eight Federal…

Research topics

• Political Science
• Business
• Economics
• Psychology
• Monetary economics
• Public economics
• Macroeconomics
• Economic growth
• Law
• Public relations

Selected publications

• Central Bank Communication with the General Public: Promise or False Hope?

  Journal of Economic Literature · 2024 · 96 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Central banks are increasingly reaching out to the general public to motivate and explain their monetary policy actions. One major aim of this outreach is to ensure accountability and create trust; another is to guide inflation expectations. This article surveys a rapidly growing literature on central bank communication with the public, rather than with the financial markets. We first discuss why such communication matters and is more challenging than communicating with expert audiences. Then we…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Central Bank Communication with the General Public: Promise or False Hope?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 48 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961–2021

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2022-08-04 · 29 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  From the New York Times bestselling author, the fascinating story of U.S. economic policy from Kennedy to COVID-filled with lessons for todayIn this book, Alan Blinder, one of the world's most influential economists and one of the field's best writers, draws on his deep firsthand experience to provide an authoritative account of sixty years of monetary and fiscal policy in the United States. Spanning twelve presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Joe Biden, and eight Federal Reserve chairs, from Wil…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Landings, Soft and Hard: The Federal Reserve, 1965–2022

  The Journal of Economic Perspectives · 2023-02-01 · 25 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  “Soft landings,” that is, cases in which the central bank tightens monetary policy to fight inflation but does not cause a recession (which would be a “hard landing”, are thought to be difficult to achieve and extremely rare. According to the conventional wisdom, the Federal Reserve has managed to achieve only one soft landing in the past 60 years—in 1994–1995. This paper studies the eleven episodes of monetary policy tightening by the Fed since 1965, and concludes that the central bank has a be…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Central Bank Communication with the General Public: Promise or False Hope?

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-07-01 · 23 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Central banks are increasingly reaching out to the general public to motivate and explain their monetary policy actions. One major aim of this outreach is to guide inflation expectations; another is to ensure accountability and create trust. This article surveys a rapidly-growing literature on central bank communication with the public. We first discuss why and how such communication is more challenging than communicating with expert audiences. Then we survey the empirical evidence on the extent…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jakob de Haan

  University of Groningen

  52 shared

• David‐Jan Jansen

  De Nederlandsche Bank

  46 shared

• Michael Ehrmann

  European Central Bank

  43 shared

• Alan B. Krueger

  Agricultural Research Service

  23 shared

• Patrick Artus

  18 shared

• Jeremy B. Rudd

  16 shared

• Marcel Fratzscher

  German Institute for Economic Research

  15 shared

• William J. Baumöl

  Walter de Gruyter (Germany)

  13 shared

Awards & honors

• Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association
• Member of the American Philosophical Society
• Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Member of the American Academy of Political and Social Scien…
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize by the AAPSS (2023)

Similar researchers at Princeton University

• Gene M. Grossmanh-94
• Roland Benabouh-75
• Markus Brunnermeierh-70