WASHINGTON: International Monetary Fund chief economist Olivier Blanchard is retiring from the Fund and joining the Peterson Institute for International Economics as a senior fellow, the IMF said.

Blanchard, who took the lead IMF post in 2008 amid the global financial crisis, plans to retire from the IMF on September 30.

“As one of the world’s leading macroeconomists, Olivier has been on the forefront of the Fund’s response to the global financial crisis, spurring a fundamental rethinking of macroeconomic policy that is still reverberating in academic and policy circles,” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in a statement.

The IMF said a search for his replacement would begin immediately.

Blanchard, a native of France who has spent most of his professional life in the US, will become the C. Fred Bergsten Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute, a position named after the founder of the Washington-based think tank.

Blanchard, who helped steer the Fund since 2008 and guided it through the global economic recession, was behind many of the IMF’s policy shifts in recent years in response to lessons from the 2008 crisis.

For example, in 2012 the IMF conceded that the austerity programs it had pushed caused more economic damage than forecast during the height of the crisis.

Lagarde said Blanchard enhanced the IMF’s reputation in economic thought by leading its research department and flagship publication, the World Economic Outlook.

“Like everyone else at the Fund, I will miss him.”

Blanchard will take up a new position as a senior fellow at the nonprofit think tank in Washington.

A citizen of France like Lagarde, Blanchard taught at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His work has focused on monetary policy, speculative bubbles, and labor policy, among other issues, the IMF said.

Blanchard told the Wall Street Journal he needs to digest the issues he’s grappled with during his time at the Fund.