Professor Katharina Pistor Leads Law and Finance Course in Paris
The Four-Day Course Precedes the First Annual Workshop of Pistor's Global Research Network, Which Is Funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the Max Planck Society.
New York, January 7, 2014—This week, Columbia Law School Professor Katharina Pistor is teaching an intensive course on law and finance at Columbia University’s Global Center in Paris.
Supported by a grant from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the four-day course includes students, postdocs, and researchers. It covers theories about the relationship between law and finance, including new theoretical approaches such as Pistor’s Legal Theory of Finance, which outlines the law-finance paradox. Pistor’s theory holds that financial markets are legally constructed, but that if all financial commitments were enforced irrespective of fundamental change, the markets would collapse. Pistor’s paper on her theory was published in the Journal of Comparative Economics.
The Paris course precedes the first annual workshop of the Global Law in Finance Network, which Pistor founded and is co-funded by INET and prize money from Pistor’s 2012 Max Planck Research Award.
As part of the workshop, Pistor will convene economists and philosophers from around the world to discuss and debate her theory’s merits. In addition to Pistor, the Global Law in Finance Network consists of Oxford University Lecturer Dan Awrey, Goethe University Professor and Columbia Law School International Visiting Professor of Law Brigitte Haar, and three doctoral students.