Explore
The Money and Finance Idea Lab explores the relation of money and finance in theoretical terms and in institutional configurations, including the design of financial and policy instruments employed by central banks, as well as the design of financial intermediaries and their relation to central banks and market regulators.
Money and finance are at once deeply overlapping and yet worlds apart. Different disciplines address one or the other in academia. Money is relegated primarily to the field of macro-economics, whereas finance gets treated with the tools of microeconomics and split between economics departments and business schools. Legal scholars have long ignored money and studied finance through the lens of banking or securities regulation.
And yet, recurrent global crises have demonstrated how intertwined money and finance are, how deeply monetary policy affects not just interest rates but the organization of markets and the instruments and intermediaries created by private actors. Indeed, the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 came as a surprise to most, including leading experts. It revealed stunning misconceptions of the nature of financial systems and triggered fresh scholarship in many disciplines, featuring perspectives from outside of financial economics and macro-economics, including institutional economics, law, political science, sociology, and geography.
Launched in Fall 2023, the Idea Lab gives scholars from Columbia and beyond a platform to discuss their work, develop new lines of research, and connect with, among others, regulatory bodies, civil society organizations, and industry groups across the globe. The Lab is co-led by Columbia Professor Katharina Pistor and Matthias Thiemann, professor for European Public Policy, Sciences Po Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, and regularly hosts workshops, conducts expert reviews, and supports ongoing research by emerging scholars.
In the 2023-24 academic year, the Lab launched an online seminar series under the heading “The Political Economy of Liquidity”. The series explored the concept of liquidity, its role in different markets, and the ways in which public and private actors contribute to creating and maintaining liquidity, or at times precipitate its demise.
In the 2024-25 academic year, the Lab has devoted the online seminar series to a closely related question: “Who Governs Finance?” This series analyzes several battle grounds for control, including global bond markets and their impact on monetary sovereignty; the role and limitations of central banks in governing finance in historical perspective; and the challenges facing countries in the Global South in keeping their financial systems stable and safe for their citizens, to name just a few.
Faculty, graduate students (particularly doctoral students), and postdoctoral fellows are invited to join the online seminar series. To learn more about the Money and Finance Idea Lab and get involved, please sign up for the Center for Political Economy newsletter.
Events
Grants
The Faculty Grant opportunity is now closed. The next application cycle will open in December 2025.
The Graduate Student Grant opportunity is now closed. The next application cycle will open in September 2025.
Faculty Leadership
Katharina Pistor is Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School and a leading scholar and writer on corporate governance, money and finance, property rights, and comparative law and legal institutions.
She is the author or co-author of nine books. Her most recent book, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality, examines how assets such as land, private debt, business organizations, or knowledge are transformed into capital through contract law, property rights, collateral law, and trust, corporate, and bankruptcy law. The Code of Capital was named one of the best books of 2019 by the Financial Times and Business Insider.
Pistor publishes widely in legal and social science journals. 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. She has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Comparative Law, Columbia Journal of European Law, European Business Organization Law Review, and Journal of Institutional Economics.