Alan Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler memorial professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and a regular columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
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 and other 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 presidential campaigns, he has served as economic adviser to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton. He continues to advise members of Congress and officeholders. He also served briefly as deputy assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office when that agency started in 1975, and has testified 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. He was the founder and either the director or co-director of Princeton’s Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies from 1989 to 2011.
Dr. Blinder is the author or co-author of 23 books, including the textbook Economics: Principles and Policy (now with the late William Baumol and John Solow), which is now in its 14th edition, and from which over three million college students have learned introductory economics. His best-selling book, After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead (2013) won several awards. Advice and Dissent: Why America Suffers When Economics and Politics Collide (2018) was published by Basic Books. His latest book, A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961–2021 was published by Princeton University Press in October 2022. Dr. Blinder has written scores of scholarly articles on such topics as fiscal policy, central banking, offshoring, and the distribution of income. He also appears frequently on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and elsewhere.
Dr. Blinder was previously 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 a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS). In October 2023, he was awarded the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize by the AAPSS.
He also serves on academic advisory panels for The Hamilton Project, the Center for American Progress, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bretton Woods Committee, and a former governor of the American Stock Exchange.
Dr. Blinder has also had a successful business career, co-founding two entrepreneurial start-ups. He and his wife, Madeline, live in Princeton, NJ. They have two sons and four grandchildren.
