The transformative power of AI: economic implications and challenges - Speakers

Conference programme

Her research focuses on Technological Transformation, Human Capital, and Entrepreneurial Finance. She investigates how AI adoption reshapes labor markets, skill demands, and organizational structures, analyzing its impact across occupations, firms, and industries. In the field of Entrepreneurial Finance, she examines venture capital dynamics and factors influencing high-growth entrepreneurship.

He was Director General of Economics, Statistics and Research at the Banco de España (BdE) during the period 2018-2022, where he also served as non-voting member of the Executive Board and the Governing Council, Alternate to the Governor on the Governing Council of the ECB and member of the EU Economic and Financial Committee (EFC). Previously, he held several responsibilities at the BdE, the Spanish Securities Markets Commission (CNMV) and the Economic Bureau of the Spanish Prime Minister. Mr Arce holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics and a MSc Economics from the University College London.

His research focuses on the firm-level impact of artificial intelligence, with an emphasis on young, innovative companies. He also investigates the complementary assets that enable firms to fully capture the value of AI technologies. Dominik holds an M.Sc. from the Technical University of Munich and has spent time at Bocconi University in Milan and the University of Cambridge.

His research focuses on international financial markets, monetary theory, and macroeconomics with special emphasis on bubbles, liquidity, financial crises and digital money. He established the webinar series as a platform for leading thinkers. Brunnermeier was awarded his PhD by the London School of Economics (LSE) and a Doctor honoris causa from the University of Regensburg. His award winning books include "A Crash Course on Crises", “The Resilient Society”, and "The Euro and the Battle of Ideas."

Brunnermeier is president of the American Finance Association, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Centre for Economic Policy Research, CESifo, ABFER, and a member of the Bellagio Group on the International Economy. He is a Sloan Research Fellow, fellow of the Econometric Society, Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of the Bernácer Prize granted for outstanding contributions in the fields of macroeconomics and finance. He is a member of several advisory groups, including to the US Congressional Budget Office, the Bank for International Settlements, Bank of Japan, and the Bundesbank as well as previously to the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve of New York, the European Systemic Risk Board.

He is also an international research associate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London and a Research Fellow at IZA. His research interests are broadly in labor economics and in the economics of education.

Previously, he worked as Director in the International Department and as Head of Research at the Bank of Canada, and held various positions at the ECB, including Head of the Financial Research Division. His research covers central bank communication, monetary policy transmission, international finance and household finance. It has been published in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Monetary Economics. He holds a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, a visiting scholar at the European Central Bank and Bank of Spain, a fellow at Collegium Institute, a non-resident fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Economic Policy Research. Additionally, he is a fellow of the Econometric Society.

He has been working on micro- and macroeconomic aspects of productivity, labour markets and the role of structural policies. Previously he worked at the Central Bank of Hungary and in other areas of the OECD and was a visiting researcher at the International Monetary Fund. He holds a PhD and an MPhil in Economics from the Tinbergen Institute in Amsterdam and a university degree in Economics from the Corvinus University of Budapest.

She is also affiliated with CEPR, CESifo, the Institute of Employment Research (IAB), IZA, the University of Luxembourg and ZEW. She is a labor economist focusing on the evolution of human capital, the interaction of skills and technology, migration, the spatial distribution of economic shocks and public policies. Christina Gathmann holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, which won her the Young Economist Award of the European Economic Association. She held positions at Stanford University, the Hoover Institution and the University of Mannheim. From 2011-2021, she was full professor of Labor Economics and Political Economy in the Department of Economics (Alfred-Weber-Institute) at Heidelberg University.

He has previously taught at Queen Mary, University of London; Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, USA and Stern School of Business, New York University, USA. His research interests are productivity and growth.

He has published in academic journals and written, with Stian Westlake, two non-technical books, Capitalism Without Capital: the Rise of the Intangible Economy (Princeton, 2017) and Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy (Princeton 2022).

In addition to his academic activities, he has been an External Member of the Reporting Panel of the Competition and Markets Authority (2001-2009); a non-Executive Director of the UK Statistics Authority (2016-2022) and an External Member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (2018-2024).

His broad research interests are in the domain of technology and innovation management, with a focus on social and behavioral aspects of artificial intelligence and open source software to better understand how both can be leveraged by large, medium-sized, and entrepreneurial firms to more effectively compete in the market, while also adding value to society. He is particularly interested in the strategic implications of digital tools for open source software, a critical public good upon which the modern economy is built. His prior research experience in labor and health economics equipped him to apply the tools of the trade towards managerially relevant questions in this exciting and growing area.

He is currently an associate professor at the University of Alcalá, associate researcher at CEMFI (Center for Monetary and Financial Studies), CEPR (Center for Economic Policy Research) and IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor), adviser at the Banco de España, and President of the Spanish National Productivity Board.

He has published many articles on economic topics in academic journals. His main lines of research fall within the fields of Macroeconomics, Labor Economics, and Public Economics.

Prior to joining Stanford, Sophia worked as an Economist and Quantitative Analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. While there, she contributed to supervisory projects targeting cyber and operational risks and developed Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing tools for supervisory purposes.

Broadly, her research focuses on applying ML and Generative AI models to economic research, with particular emphasis on policy and central bank communication, banking, and financial stability. Sophia holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Tel Aviv University in Israel and earned her doctoral degree in economics from the University of Houston.

Prior to this he worked at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. His research focuses on banking and international finance issues, and has been widely published in academic journals, including the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. He has also published books on Systemic Risk, Crises and Macroprudential Regulation (MIT Press), Systemic Financial Crises: Containment and Resolution (Cambridge University Press), and Deposit Insurance Around the World: Issues of Design and Implementation (MIT Press). He is a Professor of Finance at Tilburg University, Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), Chair of the ESCB Heads of Research Committee, Chair of the Steering Committee of the Euro Area Business Cycle Network, Editor of the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, and Member of the Board of Directors of TalentNomics. He studied at Tilburg University, the University of Amsterdam, and the London School of Economics.

Between 2011 and 2019 she served as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that she served as French Minister of Economy and Finance from 2007 to 2011, having been Trade Secretary from 2005 to 2007. A lawyer by background, she practised for 20 years with international law firm Baker McKenzie, of which she became Global Chair in 1999. She was the first woman to hold each of these positions.

In 2022 President Lagarde was ranked the second most influential woman in the world by Forbes. She has also been recognised by TIME as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She was named Officer in the French Order of the Legion of Honor in April 2012 and Commander in the National Order of Merit in May 2021.

He is responsible for the Directorate General Economics and the Directorate General Monetary Policy. Before joining the ECB, he was the Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland. He has also chaired the Advisory Scientific Committee and Advisory Technical Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board and was Whately Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin. He is also a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, he was awarded a PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 1995 and was Assistant Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Columbia University from 1995 to 1997, before returning to Dublin. In 2001 he was the inaugural recipient of the Bernácer Prize for outstanding contributions to European monetary economics.

After six years at Harvard Business School, she joined Toronto in 2014. Trained in managerial economics and strategy, her work spans the rise of the commercial internet to AI adoption, with a focus on entrepreneurship, productivity, and the future of work. Her research appears in Management Science, American Economic Review, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Harvard Business Review, and leading outlets in the U.S. and Canada.

Her research on machine learning for the study of climate change helped launch the interdisciplinary field of Climate Informatics. She co-founded the International Conference on Climate Informatics, which will hold its 14th annual event in 2025. She gave an invited tutorial: Climate Change: Challenges for Machine Learning, at NeurIPS 2014. She currently serves on the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education, and as Tutorials co-Chair for the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2024 and 2025.

He has held academic positions at Curtin University, The University of Queensland, and Bond University, among others. An ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award recipient, Shams has published 31+ papers in top-tier journals, including Journal of Corporate Finance and Journal of Banking and Finance. His research has garnered accolades like the CNMV Best Paper Award and has been featured in The Economist and The Conversation. Shams is dedicated to mentoring early-career researchers and students, fostering impactful work and successful careers. He earned his Ph.D. in Finance from Monash University and is a passionate traveller and cultural enthusiast.

Founded by Professor Yoshua Bengio, Mila is recognized as a global leader in scientific advances that inspires innovation and the development of AI for the benefit of all.

Valerie has more than 20 years of experience in leadership, strategy and transformation including Chief Talent Officer at Cirque du Soleil as well as cofounder of The Mobïus Bias Project, an initiative focused on diversity in leadership.

She began her career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company after a master’s degree in Economics at HEC Montreal. She is now a prominent Canadian executive and sits on the board of directors of a number of organizations, including Montreal International, Energir and at Chartwell.

Before joining the European Central Bank in 1998, he was a research economist at the Banca d’Italia and later desk Economist in the European Department of the IMF. He has written on the political economy of fiscal policy, on the reform of social security, on the history and theory of monetary standards, on stochastic general equilibrium macro-modelling and on monetary economics in general. He has published in the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control and contributed to several other publications.

His main research interests are financial economics, banking, and artificial intelligence. His research has been published in Management Science, the Journal of International Economics, and the Journal of Financial Services Research. He has also taught courses on text analysis and financial analytics at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve, he was an economist in the Center for Financial Research at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of California Berkeley, his master’s from the Barcelona School of Economics, and his PhD from the University of Pompeu Fabra.

Previously, she worked at the International Monetary Fund, leading various policy and research initiatives and country missions. She received her Ph.D. in Economics, and MSc in Economics and Finance, from the University of York (UK). Her work, which focuses on Macroeconomics and International Trade and Finance, has been impactful in policymaking globally and was widely published.

His research primarily focuses on the financial risks associated with non-bank financial intermediaries. His work has been published in the North American Journal of Economics and Finance, the Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, and the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary and Financial Research Working Paper series. Prior to joining the HKMA, he received his MPhil in Economics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.