ICePP Public Finance Conference Series
Overview
Since 2001, the International Center for Public Policy (ICePP) has organized 16 conferences on a broad range of public finance topics. These conferences have brought together scholars and policy makers to discuss timely and innovative public finance issues. They have also offered graduate students opportunities to collaborate with leaders in economics, public policy, and finance. All conferences have resulted in book or journal publications.
Upcoming Conferences
ICePP’s next conference will be in honor of the retirement of Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, founding director of ICePP, in late 2024.
Purpose
Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Emeritus Regents Professor of Economics, founded and created the ICePP Public Finance Conference series in 2001. His goal was to bring top public finance scholars and experts in the academic and policy world to Atlanta to present and discuss the most timely and relevant public finance issues affecting governments and policy makers around the world. The first conference was in honor of well-known professor of economics and fiscal economist Richard Bird and his career in public finance. Dr. Martinez-Vazquez’s vision of bringing scholars and students together in a university setting has laid the groundwork for the ICePP Public Finance Conference series for more than 20 years. In that time, ICePP has hosted 16 Public Finance Conferences, making the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies (AYSPS) a hub for cutting-edge public finance discussions.
ICePP has prioritized student engagement since the advent of the conference series. We ensure that PhD students in our economics and public policy programs are able to collaborate with top professors in these fields from other academic institutions. Many graduate students have co-authored and presented papers with faculty for the conferences and benefited from interacting with some of the top minds in public finance. Graduate students also benefit from the “real-world” connections the conferences offer, such as with leaders and fiscal policy experts at the World Bank, IMF, and UNDP, among other organizations.
While many of our conferences have been organized internally by Georgia State faculty, such as Roy Bahl, James Alm, and Sally Wallace, conferences have frequently also been collaborations with other individuals and institutions that focus on specific areas of public finance. In 2006 and 2008, ICePP collaborated with Joan Youngman and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to hold two separate conferences on property taxation. Others who have organized conferences with our Georgia State faculty include but are not limited to the following:
- Richard Bird, Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Toronto
- Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Minister of Finance, Indonesia
- Francois Vaillancourt, Professor of Economics, University of Montreal
- Jonas Frank, Economist, International Monetary Fund
- Stanley Winer, Emeritus Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University
- Benno Torgler, Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology
- Bob Searle, Former Secretary, Commonwealth Grants Commission, Canberra, Australia
ICePP’s 16 conferences have resulted in 12 books—published by Cambridge University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, Routledge, Springer Verlag, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, among others—and two special editions in academic journals. All papers written for our conferences have been published. The papers produced during one conference were submitted without any guarantee of publication to Public Finance Review, where they went through the regular review process and were revised in response to comments by anonymous, external reviewers. Ultimately, these papers became a Public Finance Review special issue. Previous conferences can be accessed when available via the links below:
- Public Finance in Developing & Transitional Countries; Essays in Honor of Richard Bird – 2001
- Can Decentralization Help Rebuild Indonesia? – 2002
- The Hard to Tax: An International Perspective – 2003
- The Challenges of Tax Reform in a Global Economy – 2004
- Challenges in the Design of Fiscal Equalization & Intergovernmental Transfers – 2004
- Experimental Public Economics – 2005
- Alternative Methods to Taxing Individuals – 2006
- Making the Property Tax Work in Developing & Transitional Countries – 2006
- Tax Compliance & Evasion – 2007
- Obstacles to Decentralization: Lessons from Selected Countries – 2008
- What Role for Property Taxes? – 2008
- Coercion & Social Welfare in Contemporary Public Finance – 2010
- Taxation & Development: The Weakest Link; Essays in Honor of Roy Bahl – 2012
- Infrastructure & Decentralization: A Memorial Conference in Honor of Dana Weist – 2012/13
- Decentralized Governance and Climate Change Conference (ICePP/World Bank) – 2022
- Contemporary Challenges in Infrastructure Finance – 2023
- Future Challenges in Fiscal Decentralization: Essays in Honor of Jorge Martinez-Vazquez – 2024