Workshop on Global Economic and Financial Implications of Artificial Intelligence
Organizers: EconTAI and IMF
December 10-11, 2025
Artificial intelligence is advancing at an unprecedented pace, with the potential to transform production, boost growth, and reshape global economic structures—while posing profound challenges for policy frameworks. Against this backdrop, the IMF will host a 1.5-day workshop bringing together frontier AI experts and economists, both internal and external, to examine the economic and financial implications of rapid AI development.
Day 1 (Fund-All, in person and internal livestream via Teams) will feature a keynote address and expert panels on frontier AI developments, followed by economist presentations on productivity, competition, labor markets, and policy responses. In the spirit of preparing for out-of-distribution events, Day 2 (half-day, closed-door, by invitation only) will focus on a guided scenario-planning exercise—assuming transformative AI technologies that can perform many cognitive and manual tasks—to explore five-year-ahead diffusion paths and their macro-financial policy implications.
Wednesday, Dec 10th (Day 1)
(Fund-All Event, in person and internal livestream via Teams)
| 9 – 9:10 am | Welcome and Opening Remarks Nigel Clarke: IMF Deputy Managing Director |
| 9:10 – 9:45 am | Keynote Speech with Q&A Jason Matheny: President and CEO, RAND |
| 9:45 – 10:40 am | Session on Technological Advances Moderator: Anton Korinek (Professor and Faculty Director, EconTAI) Each speaker will give a 10-minute presentation followed by 20 minutes of moderated discussion and 15 minutes of Q&A. Speakers: Lennart Heim (Lead on AI & Compute, RAND's Technology and Security Policy Center) Sébastien (Séb) Krier (Frontier Policy Development Lead, Google DeepMind) |
| 10:40–11:00 am | Break |
| 11:00 – 12.00 pm | Panel on Society and Governance Moderator: Era Dabla-Norris (Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF) Speakers: Stephanie Bell (Chief Programs and Insights Officer, Partnership on AI) Justin Bullock (VP of Policy, Americans for Responsible Innovation) Duncan Cass-Beggs (Executive Director, Global AI Risks Initiative at CIGI) |
| 12:00 – 1:20 pm | Lunch (by invitation) |
| 1:20 – 2:15 pm | Economic Paper Session 1: Each presenter will speak for 20 minutes followed by 15 minutes of Q+A Moderator: Jim Tebrake (Deputy Director, Statistics Department, IMF) Presentations: AI and Economic Growth: Capabilities and Potential Bottlenecks Ben Jones (Northwestern University) Transformative AI, Growth Explosions, and Real Interest Rates Basil Halperin (University of Virginia), with Tom Davidson, Thomas Houlden, Anton Korinek |
| 2:15 – 3:10 pm | Economic Paper Session 2: Each presenter will speak for 20 minutes followed by 15 minutes of Q+A Moderator: Andrew Berg (Deputy Director, Institute for Capacity Development, IMF) Presentations: Artificial Intelligence, Competition, and Welfare Susan Athey (Stanford University) with Fiona Scott Morton The Global Impact of AI: Mind the Gap Giovanni Melina (IMF) with Eugenio M Cerutti, Antonio Garcia Pascual, Yosuke Kido, Longji Li, Marina Mendes Tavares, Philippe Wingender |
| 3:10 – 3:30 pm | Break |
| 3:30 - 4:50 pm | Economic Paper Session 3: Each presenter will speak for 20 minutes followed by 20 minutes of Q+A Moderator: Atish Rex Ghosh (Deputy Director, Strategy, Policy, and Review Department, IMF) Presentations: Expertise Neil Thompson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) with David Autor (Artificial) Intelligence Saturation and the Future of Work Ioana Marinescu (University of Pennsylvania) with Konrad Körding Role of Fiscal Policy in Broadening the Gains of AI Anh Nguyen (IMF) with Era Dabla-Norris and Daniel Garcia-Marcia |
| 4:50 – 5:00 pm | Closing remarks |
| 5:00 – 6:00 pm | Adjourn + Bilateral discussions |
| 6:00 – 8:00 pm | Dinner (by invitation) |
Thursday, December 11 (Day 2): Scenario Planning Workshop
(Closed-door event, by invitation only, under Chatham House Rule)
The scenario exercise is developed in collaboration with the Windfall Trust organization.