114th Annual Conference on Taxation, 2021-Going Virtual Announcement

November 17 – 20, 2021 | Virtual Meeting

Conference Chair
James Alm, President, National Tax Association

Program Chairs
Jacob Goldin, Stanford University
Tatiana Homonoff, New York University
Alex Rees-Jones, University of Pennsylvania

To help ensure the safety of all our attendees and participants, we have decided to hold the 114th Annual NTA Conference virtually again this year. Originally scheduled to be held in Detroit, on Thursday November 18 to Saturday November 20, the conference will now be held via Zoom starting Wednesday, November 17 through Friday, November 19. The short course will be held on Saturday, November 20. The conference will start at 11:00 am Eastern Time on Wednesday and 11:00 am Eastern Time on Thursday and Friday. Sessions will go until 5:00 pm Eastern Time each day.

Motivated by the important role of public assistance programs during the COVID-19 pandemic and by the discussions of policy reform occurring during the early days of the Biden administration, the theme of this year’s conference is “Improving the U.S. Safety Net.” Keynote speakers and plenary panels will be oriented towards analysis of U.S. safety-net policies. We especially encourage submissions in line with this topic.

This year’s conference also includes a new submission category, Inequality and Disparities, for papers that investigate disparities by characteristics such as race or gender as well as the effects of tax or non-tax policies that are intended to alleviate them. We particularly encourage submissions to this topic area as well.

More details about the schedule and registration will be forthcoming, but we wanted to make sure you know the conference will take place as usual, just online. Some of the scheduled highlights:

• Plenary session on “Improving the U.S. Safety Net”
• Keynote addresses by Raj Chetty, Harvard University, and Cecilia Rouse, Council of Economic Advisers
• The Holland Medal Award session
• Numerous concurrent sessions on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
• Graduate student mentoring session
• A short course on Saturday taught by Maya Rossin-Slater, Stanford University, on “The Social Safety Net as an Investment into the Next Generation”

In addition to the foregoing, we are working on ways to make creative use of the virtual format to maximize intellectual engagement over these three days in November. While this year’s conference won’t feature the usual in-person sessions and hallway chatter, plans are underway to reconfigure certain features of the conference (e.g., receptions, poster sessions) into an effective virtual format so that we can gather and exchange ideas at this important moment.

Please mark your calendars now and stay tuned!