Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law

Director, Center on Global Legal Transformation

Member, Committee on Global Thought

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. Her most recent book is “The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality” (Princeton University Press, 2019).

A founding member of the Committee on Global Thought, Pistor remains an active contributor to CGT’s research projects and “Global Think-ins” (a signature term she conceived). Most recently, Pistor deadlined a CGT Global Think-In on her recent book The Code of Capital. Pistor is now leading a new CGT Signature Research project titled A World Indebted, which takes a close look at debt dependencies and interdependencies and how they shape economic inequality and political tensions within, and between, countries.

 

Website

Select Publications

  • The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality, Princeton University Press, 2018
  • “Regulatory Capabilities” (with Fabrizio Cafaggi) in Journal of Regulation and Governance, 2015
  • Governing Access to Essential Resources (with Olivier De Schutter, eds.), Columbia University Press, 2015
  • “Legal Institutionalism: Capitalism and the Constitutive Role of Law” (with Simon Deakin, David Gindis, Geoffrey Hodgson, and Kainan Huang) in Journal of Comparative Economics, 2014
  • “Law in Finance” (Editor’s introduction to Special Issue with same title) in Journal of Comparative Economics, 2013
  • “A Legal Theory of Global Finance” in Journal of Comparative Economics, 2013

Education

  • J.S.D., University of Munich, Faculty of Law, 1998
  • M.P.A., Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, 1994
  • Assessor, State of Hamburg, Second Juridical State Exam, 1992
  • LL.M., University of London, 1989
  • J.D., University of Freiburg, First Juridical State Exam, 1988

Activities and Affiliations

  • Member, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science, 2015
  • President, World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research, 2014-present
  • Member, Board of Supervisors, Italian Academy, Columbia University, 2013-present
  • Member, Board of Advisors, Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, 2011-present
  • Research Associate, Center of Economic Policy Research (CEPR), London, 2005-present
  • Research Associate, European Corporate Governance Institute, 2003-present