Katharina Pistor is researcher and writer on capitalism and capitalist law, the law of money and finance, comparative law and law and development. 

She is the (co-) author and editor of nine books. Her most recent book, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton UP 2019), explains how, behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, capital is created—and why this little-known activity is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else. The Code of Capital explores the various ways that debt, complex financial products, and other assets are selectively coded to protect and reproduce private wealth. The Code of Capital was named one of the best books of 2019 by the Financial Times and Business Insider. 

Katharina Pistor has currently two books under contract: “Capitalist Law and How to Transform It” (Yale UP). This book explores how capitalism reconstitute itself through law and what it would take to transform it. She is also working with Co-Pierre Georg on “Coded Power” (Princeton UP), a book aims to show how control over the formal means by which societies organize themselves -- the legal and digital codes – can empower a few at the expense of the many, lest control is firmly vested in the latter.

Pistor regularly publishes in legal and social science journals. In her paper “Rule by Data: The End of Markets” in The Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems (2020), she suggested that the harvesting of consumer data at scale creates new asymmetries of information and power that renders illusionary the idea of voluntary contracting in a free market. And in her essay “From Territorial to Monetary Sovereignty” in the Journal on Theoretical Inquiries in Law (2017), she argued that the rise of a global money system means a new definition of sovereignty -- the control of money -- which might eventually be de-coupled from territory. She is a regular contributor to Project Syndicate, has published opinion pieces, among others, in The Guardian, and The New York Times.

Katharina Pistor serves as the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School, which she joined in 2001. Previously she held teaching and research positions at Harvard Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Law in Hamburg. She has also been visiting professor at the University of Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, Pennsylvania Carey Law School, the London School of Economics, Oxford, and Tel Aviv University. She is an elected member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (2015), the European Academy of Sciences (2021), and The Club of Rome (2024). In 2012 she received (with Martin Hellwig) the Max Planck Research Award on international financial regulation. In addition, she has received research grants by the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the US National Science Foundation. She is one of the three co-directors of Columbia University’s Center for Political Economy, funded by a major grant by the Hewlett Foundation.

Katharina Pistor loves the arts. She is an avid concert goer and visitor of galleries and museums. She also and enjoys playing the harpsichord alone and in chamber ensembles together with her husband Carsten Bonnemann on the viol.