Moderator

Philipp Genschel, Joint Chair in European Public Policy, Department of Social and Political Science and Robert Schuman Centre, EUI

Speakers

Ioana Petrescu, Senior Fellow, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government; Former Finance Minister, Romania

Thomas Rixen, Professor of International and Comparative Political Economy, Freie Universität Berlin

Pascal Saint-Amans, Director, Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Taxation might be a national prerogative, but it is an international headache, with various international organizations working over time on improving international tax coordination. From an initial focus on double taxation and tax evasion, concerns about tax competition and tax havens have increased in salience in the 1990s, with the globalization of markets and the shift towards the knowledge economy. More recently, climate change, digitization, and wealth inequalities within and between nations entered the agenda. Is better international coordination for corporate taxation in this context a way to check rising global income and wealth inequalities? What is the impact of the shift to digital on tax bases? Which role could the EU play in addressing global tax coordination issues?

The economic costs of COVID-19 have by now been shown to be much larger than originally foreseen in the early days of the pandemic. Faced with a simultaneous and prolonged supply-side and demand-side shock, governments have gone to extraordinary lengths in order to avoid an overly heavy burden from the health crisis on households and businesses as well as to sustain and support an eventual economic recovery. This unprecedented fiscal expansion has pushed already high public deficits and debts even higher, in both advanced as well as emerging economies. We now live in a debt-heavy world; but will that debt have to be repaid, and how?

Conversation between

Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund and Alexander Stubb, Director of the School of Transnational Governance, EUI

Conversation between

Christine Lagarde, President, European Central Bank and George Papaconstantinou, Professor of International Political Economy and Director of Executive Education, School of Transnational Governance, EUI

Conversation between

Bengt Holmström, Professor of Economics, MIT and Alexander Stubb Director, School of Transnational Governance

Q&A with STG, EUI students:

Weiming Huang, Melina Nitschker, Zakaria Al Shmaly, Hieu T. Nguyen, Linda Zelina