Charles Calomiris
Henry Kaufman Professor Emeritus of Financial Institutions in the Faculty of Business and Professor Emeritus of International and Public Affairs
Personal Details
Focus areas: Banking, corporate finance, financial history, monetary economics
On Leave for the 2022-2023 Academic Year
Charles W. Calomiris is Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at Columbia Business School, Director of the Business School’s Program for Financial Studies and its Initiative on Finance and Growth in Emerging Markets, and a professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee and the Financial Economists Roundtable, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Calomiris is past president of the International Atlantic Economic Society, and has served on numerous committees, including the Advisory Scientific Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board, the U.S. Congress’s International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee, and the Federal Reserve System’s Centennial Advisory Committee. He serves as co-managing editor of the Journal of Financial Intermediation.
Professor Calomiris’s research spans the areas of banking, corporate finance, financial history and monetary economics. He received a BA in economics from Yale University, magna cum laude, and a PhD in economics from Stanford University.
Professor Calomiris is the recipient of research grants from the National Science Foundation, the World Bank, the Japanese government, and many others. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel. He has consulted for central banks, the IMF, the World Bank, and many foreign governments. His most recent book (with Stephen Haber), Fragile By Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit (Princeton, 2014), has been translated into five languages, received the American Publishers 2015 Award for the Best Book in Business, Finance and Management, was named one of the Best Economics Books of 2014 by the Financial Times, and one of the Best Books of 2014 by The Times Higher Education Supplement and by Bloomberg Businessweek.
Education
- PhD in Economics, Stanford University
- BA, magna cum laude, Yale University
Affiliations
- Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee
- Shadow Open Market Committee
- Financial Economists Roundtable
- National Bureau of Economic Research
Research And Publications
China's Financial Transition at a Crossroads
U.S. Bank Deregulation in Historical Perspective
A Globalist Manifesto for Public Policy
Emerging Financial Markets
In The Media
Professor Charles Calomiris says that the federal deficit is going to swell to the point where no one will want to take on government-issued debt, and the only people who can save a failed Treasury auction will be the central bank.
Among the cultural problems and structural obstacles embedded in the bank supervisory system, says Professor Emeritus Charles Calomiris, is that bank examiners worry that raising red flags will "make everybody angry."
Proposed solutions such as private higher threshold deposit insurance have been shown to better insure bank users who deposit more than $250,000. But Charles Calomiris says deposit insurance isn't necessarily the right answer.
Charles Calomiris will present the George S. Eccles Distinguished Lecture at Utah State University on March 14.