The Clarendon Law Lectures 3: Rethinking the Theory of the Firm
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Economists discovered the firm as a serious object of inquiry only a century ago when Ronald Coase famously asked, why firms exist at all. Firms were benchmarked against markets, which gave us transaction cost economics and the incompleteness of contracts as foundations for the theory of the firm.
The Clarendon Law Lectures 2: Finance – A Double-Edged Sword
Monday, May 20, 2024
Finance is a critical ingredient for all enterprises. It is well established that early on most rely on family on friends, and occasionally on local banks. Scaling size and operations, however, often requires external funding in addition to retained earnings.
The Clarendon Law Lectures (1) 2024: The Non-Capitalist Enterprise
Friday, May 17, 2024
This is the first in a series of lectures given by Katharina Pistor for the Oxford University Faculty of Law in 2024.
Enterprises have been around for much of human history. They are formed when people join forces in pursuit of a common goal, for pooling skills and resources, diversify risk, or simply finding a way to sustain themselves and their families.
Reimagining the Digital Code: a Conversation between Katharina Pistor and Pauchi Sasaki
Katharina Pistor and Pauchi Sasaki discuss the dangers and possibilities embedded in digital code, how it could be different, what a feminine approach to coding might look like, and how conscious coding decisions could be made to empower individuals.
INET Interview: Legal Evil
From feudal land rights to intellectual property in the modern era, lawyers have been battling over capital for centuries. Typically leveraging social resources to generate and protect private wealth. Katharina Pistor (Columbia University, Center on Global Legal Transformation) explains how this epic struggle has progressed, the rules of the game, and how those rules are manipulated. In her book “The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality,” Pistor lays out all this and more.