A recap of the Piet Sanders Lecture 2021
With this lecture by Professor Katharina Pistor, Erasmus School of Law pays tribute to the honorary doctorate she received from Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2020, in recognition of her pioneering multidisciplinary research on the relationship and interaction between finance, financial markets, and law.
Katharina Pistor is an extraordinary bridge-builder between the legal and economic disciplines and her theory on law and finance has revolutionised the way in which finance and financial market regulation have to be understood. In her work she also makes the vital point that even in the age of globalisation, politics and law can shape our economies and make them more purposeful when it comes to the creation and distribution of wealth and the promotion of equality; issues that are also at the core of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Introducing: The Green Case for Transforming Capitalism
Capitalism is widely celebrated for fueling economic growth and development, even if unequally distributed. However, it also creates negative externalities, including massive environmental damages and climate change. Within capitalism’s existing ‘rules of the game’ these costs cannot be rectified because future costs are underpriced, and cost-internalization is deeply distorted by a host of legal subsidies that insulate asset holders from the costs they create. Given nature’s own laws, which are less forgiving and predictable than human-made ones, there is therefore a strong case for shedding some of capitalism’s core features and for transforming it into a system for organising the economy that is more likely to secure this planet for most of its inhabitants in the long term.