Patrick Bolton is the Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business at Columbia University. He is a Co-Director of the Center for Contracts and Economic Organization at the Columbia Law School, a past President of the American Finance Association, a Fellow of the Econometric Society (elected 1993), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2009), and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (elected 2013). He is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research, and a Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute. His areas of interest are in Contract Theory, Corporate Finance, Corporate Governance, Banking, Sovereign Debt, Political Economy, Law and Economics and Sustainable Investing. He has written a leading graduate textbook on Contract Theory with Mathias Dewatripont, MIT Press (2005); edited The Economics of Contracts, Edward Elgar Publishing Inc. (2008); co-edited, Credit Markets for the Poor with Howard Rosenthal, Russell Sage Foundation (2005); and Sovereign Wealth Funds and Long-Term Investing, with Frederic Samama and Joseph E. Stiglitz, Columbia University Press (2011).
Ensuring that developing countries remain able to access credit markets is vital for promoting growth and recovery post-pandemic. This column argues that efforts by major economies to support regional development banks and preserve their financial standing will help to limit the cost of rebuilding after the crisis. In turn, this will help to preserve international capital markets in the short and medium run.