Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality

The Code of Capital explores how the law shapes the distribution of wealth by revealing how capital is created behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys. It argues that the law selectively "codes" certain assets, endowing them with the capacity to protect and produce private wealth, and that lawyers are the keepers of the code. The book describes how debt, complex financial products, and other assets are coded to give financial advantage to their holders, and paints a troubling portrait of the pervasive global nature of the code, the people who shape it, and the governments that enforce it.

Format: Hardback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 28 May 2019
Publisher: Princeton University Press

The defining characteristic of modern economies is capital, yet most people are unaware of its origin. What exactly causes ordinary wealth to become an asset that automatically generates more wealth?

The Code of Capital reveals how capital is secretly generated behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, and why this little-known fact is one of the primary causes of the growing wealth gap between capital holders and everyone else.

In this enlightening book, Katharina Pistor contends that the law selectively "codes" certain assets, granting them the ability to protect and generate private wealth. With the correct legal coding, any object, claim, or idea can be transformed into capital, and lawyers are the guardians of the code. Pistor explains how lawyers select and employ various legal systems and legal tools to best serve their clients' needs, and how techniques initially developed centuries ago to code landholdings as capital are now being used to code stocks, bonds, ideas, and even expectations—assets that exist solely in law.

A powerful new perspective on one of the most damaging issues of our time, The Code of Capital examines the various ways in which debt, complex financial products, and other assets are coded to provide financial advantage to their holders. This provocative book paints a concerning picture of the code's pervasive global nature, the individuals who shape it, and the governments that enforce it.

Weight: 674g
Dimension: 163 x 243 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691178974