Conference Speakers

Professor Rick Krever is a leading taxation law and policy expert. He has been closely involved in modern Australian tax reform initiatives for many years, including as a member of the Commonwealth Government's Taxation Law Improvement Project Consultative Committee and the Review of Business Taxation (Ralph Review). Professor Krever has been a professor-in-residence at the Australian Taxation Office and the Australian Treasury and has twice been seconded to the International Monetary Fund. His international visiting professor positions include appointments at Osgoode Hall Law School, Erasmus University, and Harvard Law School. Professor Krever has worked with a variety of international organizations including the United Nations, European Union, Asian Development Bank, and World Bank as a post-conflict and development specialist, assisting in tax law design and drafting in regional and other jurisdictions including East Timor, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Vietnam, China, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Argentina, Antigua and Barbuda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Ghana, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kosovo, Tajikistan and Latvia.

Adrian Sawyer is a Professor in the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Prof. Martin Wenz is a Professor of National and International Tax Law and holds the Chair for Business Taxation and the Laws of International and Liechtenstein Taxation at the University of Liechtenstein. He is also the Academic Head of the Liechtenstein Executive School and the Program Director of the Master of Laws (LL.M.) in International Taxation. His main research interests are the international tax policy, the re-design of tax systems, international tax standards, the international Level-playing-field on taxation, the international tax treatment of individuals, companies, private and charitable asset and wealth structures and the various aspects of the Liechtenstein tax law. Professor Wenz gives also comprehensive advice to the Liechtenstein Government on national and international tax law including Double Tax Agreements and on the Implementation of International and European Tax Standards including Pillar 2.

Prof. Jost Heckemeyer holds the Chair of Corporate Accounting and Taxation at the Institute of Business Administration at Kiel University, Germany, and he is also a Research Associate at the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, Germany. His research interests focus on the effects of taxation on companies in globalised and digitalised markets competing for capital and a highly qualified workforce. In this context, Professor Heckemeyer advises national and international institutions - such as the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Swiss tax administration - on the design of an efficient tax policy that is up to today’s challenges. Before moving to Kiel University, Jost Heckemeyer was Professor of Accounting and Taxation at the Leibniz University Hannover from 2014 to 2017. He completed his doctorate in 2012 at Heidelberg University. He then held a post-doc position at the University of Mannheim. A research stay took him to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Washington D.C., in 2011..

Agustin Redonda is a Senior Fellow with the Council on Economic Policies (CEP) where he focuses on fiscal policy, with a strong focus on tax expenditures and tax incentives. Prior to that, he has been a research and teaching assistant with the Economics Department (IdEP) of the University of Lugano (Switzerland). He also worked with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security (MTSS) in Argentina. Agustin holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Lugano (USI), a MSc in Economics from the University Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne, an MSc in Economics from the University Paris – Est Créteil, and a BA in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He is also a trained TADAT Assessor - Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool (TADAT), and has worked as a consultant for different governments, and regional and international organizations.

Shafik Hebous (Ph.D. in Economics; Goethe University Frankfurt) is deputy division chief in the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department with extensive expertise in public finance and tax policy. Shafik leads and supervises capacity development work in taxation, including advising countries on revenue mobilization and improving the efficiency and inclusiveness of the tax system. Shafik has led and contributed to IMF's analytical agenda in taxation, including the flagship publication Fiscal Monitor. His main area of research is public finance, covering topics such as the implications of emerging technologies on taxation, the taxation of multinational companies, and fiscal multipliers. Shafik was a visiting scholar at the University of California (Berkeley), Oxford University (Center for Business Taxation), and the University of Oslo. His work has been published in academic refereed journals such as American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Monetary Economics, and Journal of Public Economics.