The Global Law and Finance Initiative 2010-2013
The initiative assembled a group of researchers from economics, law, political sciences and sociology to advance our understanding of the relation between law and finance. It set out to establish an empirically founded critique of existing theories and use this critique to generate ideas for alternative theoretical approaches. The two year research project, which was funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) produced the “Legal Theory of Finance” (LTF).
Global Law in Finance Network, GLawFiN
GLawFiN was established with the financial backing of the Max Planck Research Award Pistor received in 2012 and additional funding by INET. GLawFiN currently has three affiliated institutions – Columbia Law School, Goethe University/House of Finance, and Oxford University – represented by Katharina Pistor, Brigitte Haar, and Dan Awrey respectively. GLawFiN builds on “The Legal Theory of Finance” and explores its ramifications in different parts of the financial system. It sponsors postdocs, doctoral students, and research fellows. Their individual research projects are described here. Joint research projects pursued by the group, which have resulted in further conferences and workshops include “Justice and Finance”, “Law and Liquidity” and “The Legal Hierarchy of Moneys”. The network holds regular workshops with members and invited guests to explore these and similar topics.
Past workshop themes include “Justice and Finance” (Paris, January 2014) , “Law and Liquidity” (Oxford, June 2015), and the “Hierarchy of Money” (New York, October 2016)
GLawFiN has organized several round tables with practitioners as well as conferences. In December 2015 it co-sponsored with SAFE at Goethe University in Frankfurt a conference on “Finance between Liquidity and Insolvency”.
Re-Imagining Finance
September 2017, New York
The Re-Imagining Finance workshop brought together scholars and practitioners from computer science, law, finance, and the social sciences to explore whether decentralized technologies such as blockchain offer new solutions to re-imagine complex credit-based financial systems. Contemporary finance has become a hierarchical and highly centralized system that ultimately depends on the use of discretionary power for its survival. New decentralized technologies may offer solutions to transform finance to a sustainable, rule-based system that manages to contain crisis and offer governance solutions even in times of crises. This workshop at Columbia Law School facilitated the deeply interdisciplinary conversation needed to explore these solutions. The workshop was sponsored by the Max Planck Society/Humboldt Foundation.