What is it that transforms a simple object, an idea, or a promise to pay into an asset that creates wealth? Author Katharina Pistor explains how, behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, capital is created—and why this little-known activity is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else.
A powerful new way of thinking about one of the most pernicious problems of our time, The Code of Capital explores the various ways that debt, complex financial products, and other assets are selectively coded to protect and reproduce private wealth. This provocative book paints a troubling portrait of the pervasive global nature of the code, the people who shape it, and the governments that enforce it.
Katharina Pistor is the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School and director of the Law School’s Center on Global Legal Transformation. Her work spans comparative law and corporate governance, law and finance, and law and development. She is the co-recipient of the Max Planck Research Award (2012), a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg and the European Academies of Science and a Fellow at the European Corporate Governance Institute. Her most recent book is The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton UP, 2019).
This seminar will take place in person. Please register as places are limited and are available on the first-come, first serve basis.