Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference.

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If not stated otherwise, the discussant is the following speaker, with the first speaker being the discussant of the last paper. The last speaker of each session is the session chair.

Presenters should speak for no more than 20 minutes, and discussants should limit their remarks to no more than 5 minutes. The remaining time should be reserved for audience questions and the presenter’s responses. We suggest following these guidelines also in the (less common) 3-paper sessions in a 2-hour slot, to allow participants to move between sessions. Discussants are encouraged to avoid summarizing the paper. By focusing on a few questions and comments, the discussants can help start a broader discussion with the audience.

Only registered participants can attend this conference. Further information available on the congress website https://www.usiu.ac.ke/iipf/ .

Venue address: United States International University Africa, USIU Road, Off Thika Road (Exit 7, Kenya), P.O. Box 14634, 00800 Nairobi, Kenya

Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 9th Oct 2025, 01:19:06am EAT

 
 
Session Overview
Session
G08: Empirics of Investment and Innovation
Time:
Friday, 22/Aug/2025:
2:15pm - 4:15pm

Session Chair: Clara Martínez-Toledano, Imperial College London
Discussant 1: Sarah Necker, ifo institute
Discussant 2: Marius Bendoma, University of Douala / Higher School of Economics and Management (ESSEC)
Discussant 3: Clara Martínez-Toledano, Imperial College London
Discussant 4: Emilia Gschossmann, University of Mannheim
Location: SS11


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Presentations

Taxes And The Global Spillovers Of AI Investments

Emilia Gschossmann1, Marcel Olbert2

1University of Mannheim, Germany; 2London Business School, United Kingdom

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming business operations and global markets, yet little is known about how AI investments spill over across borders. Using a novel panel dataset, we examine the international propagation of U.S. firms’ AI investments, focusing on their European subsidiaries and broader industry-level effects. We find that AI investment strongly predicts growth in foreign subsidiaries’ assets, employment, and revenues, with significant spillovers to European industries exposed to U.S. AI firms. However, these effects vary with local tax policies: countries with attractive R&D tax incentives experience faster and larger AI-driven growth, while low corporate tax rates further amplify revenue spillovers. Our findings highlight the role of fiscal policy in shaping the diffusion of AI and offer new insights into how digital-era investments influence global economic growth.

Gschossmann-Taxes And The Global Spillovers Of AI Investments-280.pdf


Does Information about Tax Shifting Shift Tax Preferences?

Sarah Necker, Lisa Windsteiger, Fabian Böhme

ifo institute, Germany

One of the main insights of public economics is that taxes are not necessarily borne by those who pay the taxes. However, public debates about taxation rarely consider tax shifting. Using corporate taxation as an example, we investigate in a survey experiment whether individuals' preferences for taxation change when they are informed about four channels of tax shifting: prices, wages, owner payouts, or investments. We find that the preferred corporate tax rate decreases when the burden falls onto individuals (in terms of prices and wages), and less so when we reveal the effect on payouts or investments. The change is caused by own perceived costs, distributional concerns seem to play only a limited role for the reaction to the information.

Necker-Does Information about Tax Shifting Shift Tax Preferences-329.pdf


Bayesian Analysis of Public Investment Distortion in Cameroon

Marius Bendoma1, Cyrille Essomba Messiné2, Franky Brice Afia Kogueda2

1University of Douala, Higher School of Economic and Mangement (ESSEC), Cameroon; 2University of Douala, Faculty of Economic Sciences and Applied Management (FSGA), Cameroon

The objective of this article is to show that there is a distorting effect of Cameroon's failing institutional environment on the structure of public expenditure. To study the choices made by public authorities, we rely on a Bayesian model over the period 1970-2020 to determine the occurrence of public investment allocation. It emerges that institutional failure marked by corruption, political and social instability, and approximate compliance with established laws, directs public investment towards types of expenditure for which rent seeking is easier and easily concealed, particularly in physical capital to the detriment of education and health expenditure. In this context, the results also reveal that economic growth is negatively associated with the choice of investing in social projects. Economic policy recommendations are in line with budgetary rebalancing through social investments, which are essential for resolving social crises and improving factor productivity.

Bendoma-Bayesian Analysis of Public Investment Distortion-227.pdf


Private Capital Markets and Inequality

Clara Martínez-Toledano1, Ararat Gocmen2, Vrinda Mittal3

1Imperial College London, United Kingdom; 2University College London; 3University of North Carolina

This paper studies the relationship between the growth in private capital markets and the rise in economic inequalities over the last two decades in the U.S. Exploiting both company- and state-level variation in exposure to the expanded federal capital gains tax exclusion on qualified small business stock (QSBS), we find that QSBS-eligible companies’ probability of staying private increased by 3.5 percentage points, and that the average income gap between HNWIs and other income earners increased by 7.2%. We show that this rise in income concentration appears to have been driven by HNWIs’ excess returns on their early-stage investments relative to public stock market returns.

Martínez-Toledano-Private Capital Markets and Inequality-428.pdf