Economist and Public Intellectual Alan Blinder Wins the 2023 Moynihan Prize

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (March 2, 2023) – The American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS) will award the 2023 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize to Alan Blinder, a Princeton economist, columnist for The Wall Street Journal and former public servant whose work has been instrumental in shaping the public’s understanding of the American economy. The Moynihan Prize is awarded annually to a leading policy-maker, social scientist, or public intellectual whose career demonstrates the value of using research and evidence to improve the human condition.

“Alan combines world class scholarship and dedicated public service with a steadfast commitment to improving public understanding and the common good through his work,” said AAPSS President Marta Tienda. “He is one of the most influential macro economists in the world: his economics text and scores of academic papers have immeasurably improved the economics profession, and his many books, columns and op-eds have been an invaluable resource to a general public in need of plain-language depictions of complicated economic crises and economic history. It with great enthusiasm that the Academy awards the Moynihan Prize to him.”

Dr. Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where he has been on the faculty since 1971. From January 1993 through January 1996, he served as a member of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, and then as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He has advised members of congress and presidential campaigns on economic policy. He also helps the American public better understand the state of the American economy by appearing frequently on television on PBS, CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg, and others.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Blinder earned his A.B. at Princeton University, his M.Sc. at London School of Economics, and his Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology – all in economics. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society and became a Fellow of the AAPSS in 2009. He is also a former trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation and remains active on several national organizations, including the Council on Foreign Relations. At Princeton, Blinder was the Founder of the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies, which he either directed or co-directed from 1989 to 2011.

Blinder will receive the Moynihan prize later this year at a public event in Washington DC at which he will give a lecture and participate in a panel discussion on contemporary economic circumstances. AAPSS will make an announcement about that event in a future date. Previous Moynihan Prize recipients include John Holdren, former director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz; sociologist and Harvard professor William Julius Wilson; Samantha Power, Director of USAID, and children’s rights advocate Marian Wright Edelman. A full list of Prize recipients can be found on the AAPSS website.

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CONTACT:
Tom Kecskemethy, Executive Director
The American Academy of Political and Social Science
Email: thomask@upenn.edu

The American Academy of Political and Social Science, based in Philadelphia, is one of the nation’s oldest learned societies, dedicated to bringing evidence from the social sciences to bear in public policy debates and in public discourse. The Moynihan Prize was created to honor the legacy of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who championed the use of rigorous social science in service of the public good.