During the past year, my first as academic director of the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business, much of our agenda has been shaped by Columbia Business School’s commitment to promoting greater knowledge of China’s business and economy. New initiatives in the area exemplify another of Dean Glenn Hubbard’s key objectives: creating opportunities for the worlds of academia and business practice to meet and share ideas.
Among these initiatives is an ambitious research project, “China at the Crossroads: FX and Capital Markets Policies for the Coming Decade,” that brings together top academics and business leaders to address a pressing concern: For the past two decades, China has benefited from mobilizing vast savings and inexpensive labor and linking them to the global economy via export markets and the supply chains of Asian manufacturers. But Chinese growth has also been remarkably wasteful of capital — and increasingly so. Without improvements in the allocative efficiency of its financial sector, China will run into diminishing returns, continue to suffer poor stock market performance and amass ever-increasing hidden loan losses within its state-controlled banks.
The book that will result from the project, to be published next year, aims to guide public policy and successful business strategies in China by outlining challenges to the country’s financial system and offering practical, timely solutions. Noted academics and business leaders have been commissioned to write chapters, serve as chapter discussants and participate in roundtables on topics that include the privatization and reform of the banking system; the liberalization of securities markets; the transformation of corporate governance; the privatization and public listing of state-owned enterprises; and the change from a fixed to a flexible exchange-rate system. Contributors will include highly regarded professors from the School and beyond as well as practitioners from Bear Stearns, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, the IMF, JPMorgan Chase and Standard & Poor’s.
In Beijing last August, Columbia Business School partnered with Tsinghua University to bring together a group with extensive, up-to-date knowledge of the country’s policy trends — top Chinese finance professionals, policymakers and finance experts — for a two-day conference to discuss preliminary versions of the book’s chapters, which will be presented in final form at the School in February. Further new initiatives include the Gordon Wu Lecture Series; a revitalized University Seminar on Chinese Business and Economy, cosponsored by the Chazen and Weatherhead Institutes; a campaign to fund a new chair in Chinese business in memory of the late Professor N. T. Wang; the appointment of the institute’s first Chazen Research Fellow, former Morgan Stanley executive Mary Darby, to help guide various China initiatives; and the School’s new joint venture in Executive Education for financial professionals with Fudan University’s management school.
Charles Calomiris is the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions and academic director of the Chazen Institute. For more on the “China at the Crossroads” project, visit the Chazen Institute Web site.
