IMF Conference

Day 1—Saturday April 22, 2017: Pushing the Frontier

Registration

Opening Session: Digital Revolutions in Public Finance

Speaker: Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund

Session 1: Frontiers in Tax Policy I

New technology and increased information availability offer scope for policymakers to rethink the structure of tax policy in ways that could significantly increase their economic efficiency and equity. At the same time, the private sector is also taking advantage of the digital revolution—the peer to peer economy, for example, is challenging tax policy design and administration. This session will explore how policymakers could respond to these new challenges.

Chair: Ludger Schuknecht, Chief Economist, Ministry of Finance, Germany

Speakers:

• Bas Jacobs, Professor of Economics and Public Finance, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Gareth Myles, Professor of Economics,  University of Adelaide

Discussant:

• Simon Johnson, Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan School of Management

Coffee break

Session 2: Frontiers in Tax Policy II

Chair: Ann Nolan, Second Secretary General, Department of Finance, Ireland

Speakers:

• Michael Devereux, Director, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation
• Alpa Shah and Aqib Aslam, IMF

Discussant:

• Beth Adair, Global Tax Director, Airbnb

Session 3: Enhancing Fiscal Systems

This session will emphasize how digitalization has opened new doors for fiscal policymaking and management. Data on daily fiscal operations can be used to improve the quality of macroeconomic management, enabling governments to monitor (and change) the fiscal position in real time. Cutting edge cognitive computing and block chain technology now offer the opportunity to promote efficiency and transparency in government process. 

Chair: Gil Beltran, Undersecretary, Department of Finance, Philippines

Speakers:

• Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President and Director, IBM Research
• Brian Olden, Florian Misch and Marcos Poplawski Ribeiro, IMF

Discussant:

• Richard Hughes, Director, Fiscal Policy, HM Treasury, United Kingdom

Reception and Key Note Speech: The Implications of a Cashless Economy

Speaker: Kenneth Rogoff, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University

Day 2—Sunday April 23, 2017: Reaching the Frontier

Session 4: Innovation in Public Spending and Management: Dividends from the Digital Revolution

This session will explore how innovation and digitalization in public management has the potential to reduce leakages and corruption and improve the quality of budget execution and government spending. The session will also seek to quantify the potential savings from government digitalization.

Chair: Martin Lindpere, Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister, Estonia

Speakers:

• Ruth Goodwin-Groen, Managing Director, Better Than Cash Alliance
• Susan Lund, Partner, McKinsey Global Institute

Discussant:

• Philipp Krause, Deputy Director, Development Policy & Finance, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Session 5: Digitalization: How Effective Can It Be?

Digitalization offers opportunities to design spending policies in more effective ways. Technological advances may improve the quality of service delivery, for example in the education sector, where open-source platforms can accelerate the rate of learning and improve access to quality education at lower cost than under current systems. But is digitalization a panacea? Can it overcome the obstacles of weak institutions and low capacity?

Chair: Miguel Messmacher Linartas, Undersecretary of Finance, Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit, Mexico

Speakers:

• Ravi Kanbur, Professor of Economics, Cornell University
• Jenny Aker, Associate Professor of Development Economics, Tufts University

Discussant:

• Andrew McAfee, Co-Director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy

Coffee break

Session 6: How Countries Can Make the Jump

With digitalization comes the possibility to tackle issues of poverty and economic development in new and innovative ways. This session will explore how countries can and have taken advantage of the digital revolution—with Kenya and India as leading examples—drawing lessons for others seeking to ‘leapfrog’.

Chair: A. K. Seneviratne, Director General, Department of Fiscal Policy, Ministry of Finance, Sri Lanka

Speakers:

• Rathin Roy, Director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy
• Njuguna Ndung'u, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Nairobi

Discussant:

• Martin Ravaillon, Edmond D. Villani Professor of Economics, Georgetown University

Lunch (by invitation only)

High-Level Panel Discussion: Digitalization: Revolutionizing Fiscal Policy and Systems

Technology is transforming both the way we live and the policies that guide government decisions. Panelists will discuss the difficult balancing act that policymakers face between unlocking this potential to revolutionize fiscal policy formulation and implementation on the one hand, and societies’ privacy concerns and public sector capacity constraints on the other. They will also reflect on the implications of digitalization for countries at different stages of development, and seek to identify ways in which countries can embark on the digital reform path.

Moderator: Martin Sandbu, Financial Times

Panelists:

• David Lipton, First Deputy Managing Director, IMF
• Caroline Atkinson, Head of Global Policy, Google Inc.
• Andrew McAfee, Co-Director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy
• Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India