Capital: Where Does It Come From?

Join the Stigler Center and the College’s Law, Letters, and Society Program for a talk with Katharina Pistor on her new book, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality.

Capital is the defining feature of modern economies, yet most people have no idea where it actually comes from. What is it, exactly, that transforms mere wealth into an asset that automatically creates more wealth? The Code of Capital explains how capital is created behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, and why this little-known fact is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else.

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 research and teaching spans corporate law, corporate governance, money and finance, property rights, and comparative law and legal institutions. She has published widely in legal and social science journals. In 2012 she was co-recipient (with Martin Hellwig) of the Max Planck Research Award on International Financial Regulation; in 2014 she received the Allen & Overy Prize for the best working paper on law of the European Corporation Governance Institute; and in 2015 she was elected member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. She is also the recipient of research grants by the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the National Science Foundation.

Copies of Katharina Pistor’s new book, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality, will be available for sale and signing.

11:45 a.m. Registration 

12:00 p.m. Discussion and Q&A

1:00 p.m.  Adjournment and book signing

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The event will take place in Harper Center Room C09 (5807 S Woodlawn Ave).