The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
They can code capital as they choose in domestic or foreign law by opting into another country’s contract law, or by incorporating their business in a jurisdiction that offers them the greatest benefits in the form of tax rates, regulatory relief, or shareholder benefits. Opting out of one and into a different legal regime leaves only a paper or di
... See moreKatharina Pistor • The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
Realizing the centrality and power of law for coding capital has important implications for understanding the political economy of capitalism.
Katharina Pistor • The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
Everywhere we probed a little deeper, we found the core institutions of private law: contract, property, collateral, trust, corporate, and bankruptcy law.
Katharina Pistor • The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
The craftsmanship of their lawyers, the code’s masters, explains the adaptability of the code to the ever-changing roster of assets; and the wealth-creating benefits of capital help explain why states have been only too willing to vindicate and enforce innovative legal coding strategies.
Katharina Pistor • The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
Many legal scholars have already drawn attention to the fact that the operation of the market hinges on legal institutions that facilitate price discovery.
Katharina Pistor • The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
at the frontiers where new capital rights are minted day by day in the offices of law firms, states take a back seat. But states provide the legal tools that lawyers use; and they offer their law enforcement apparatus to enforce the capital that lawyers have crafted.
Katharina Pistor • The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
financial capital, the intangible capital that exists only in law.
Katharina Pistor • The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
Two legal systems dominate the world of global capital: English common law and the laws of New York State.
Katharina Pistor • The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
The wealthy often claim special skills, hard work, and the personal sacrifice they themselves or their parents or forefathers have made as justifications for the wealth they hold today. These factors may well have contributed to their fortunes. Yet, without legal coding, most of these fortunes would have been short-lived. Accumulating wealth over l
... See more