Commandments for Fiscal Adjustment in Advanced Economies." By 2011 Paul Krugman noted that Blanchard was already "suggesting that harsh austerity programs may be literally self-defeating, hurting the economy so much that they worsen fiscal prospects." Krugman thinks that by 2012, every country that had introduced "significant austerity" had suffered economically, and that Blanchard had issued "what amounted to a mea culpa." According to Krugman, "the IMF now believes that it massively understated the damage that spending cuts inflict on a weak economy." On the other hand, the IMF under Blanchard in 2014 was forced to admit that it had overestimated the negative effects of austerity – the IMF had warned of low growth because the British government did not spend enough, but in the end, the British economy grew much larger than the IMF had predicted. IMF-head Christine Lagarde apologized to the British government for the mistake. Inequality Under Blanchard's tenure at IMF, Jonathan D. Ostry and Andy Berg published their findings that "inequality was detrimental to sustained growth." By April 2014, in the World Economic Outlook, Blanchard situated inequality as a "central issue" for "macroeconomic developments." References External links Olivier Blanchard's webpage at the Peterson Institute for International Economics |- 1948 births 20th-century French economists 21st-century French economists ESCP Europe alumni Expatriate academics in the United States Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the Econometric Society French academics French officials of the United Nations Harvard University faculty International Monetary Fund people Labor economists Living people Macroeconomists MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty New Keynesian economists Paris Dauphine University alumni People from Amiens Peterson Institute for International Economics Presidents of the American Economic Association