Almost 80 participants joined the 1st WHU Young Scholar Tax Conference on Friday, October 23, 2020, which was held online.
"Given the limited number of conference and workshop opportunities in recent months, we wanted offer young academics such as doctoral students, postdocs and assistant professors the opportunity to present their current research work and receive feedback," states organizer Prof. Dr. Martin Jacob.
A challenging task for him, as he had to put together a 4-hour program from over 40 very interesting submitted papers. To be able to present as many papers as possible, the program was divided into two parts. In the first part, three papers were presented by the authors and discussed by internationally renowned professors. The conference participants further took the opportunity to make suggestions and comments for the authors.
Aruhn Venkat (McCombs School of Business, University of Texas, Austin) started by presenting his paper "Bank taxes and voluntary disclosure: Evidence from state bank tax rate changes", which he wrote together with Yoojin Lee (College of Business, California State University, Long Beach) and Shaphan Ng (Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine & Singapore Management University). John Gallemore (University of Chicago) discussed the work.
The program continued with "Tax Treaties, Tax-Motivated Income Shifting, and the Role of Enforcement", the title of the work by Malte M. Max (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam). The paper was discussed by Stacie Laplante.
In the paper "Does Dividend Taxation Affectect Voluntary Disclosure? International Evidence" Mark (Shuai) Ma (University of Pittsburgh) presented his current research results. The paper was written in cooperation with his colleague Hanlin Zhong (also University of Pittsburgh). Jeffrey Hoopes (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) discussed the research paper.
During the last hour, four young scholars had the opportunity to give a 15-minute presentation into their current research work. They were rewarded with feedback and comments from the participants via the chat. The papers selected were those of Marcel Olbert (London Business School) and Peter H. Severin (University of Mannheim), Carly Burd (Boston University - Questrom School of Business), Anthony Welsch (The University of Texas at Austin) and the team of authors Cinthia Valle Ruiz (IESEG School of Management), Ariela Caglio and Claudia Imperatore (both Bocconi University).
Organizer Martin Jacob looked back on the conference very satisfied, “Especially now, when travel and physical meetings are not possible, it is important to have at least a virtual exchange and the conference was a success”. Next fall, we will host the 2nd edition of the Young Scholar Tax Conference.