NBER-SAIF Conference on AI and Financial Markets

June 15–16, 2026 (US Eastern Time) — Virtual

The advent of artificial intelligence is viewed as one of the most important economic developments of our time. It has the potential to transform capital and labor markets and to affect the rate of productivity growth. Experts describe a range of scenarios for AI’s impact on the real economy as well as financial markets, but many important questions remain open. To promote research on the impact of AI on financial markets and the participants in them, drawing on the experience to date with the impact of AI and related technologies on investment, the financial sector, productivity, and innovation, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF) at Shanghai Jiao Tong University plan a joint research conference on this topic. This conference is the fourth in a biennial series that promotes economic research on public policies and other developments that bear on financial markets. The conferences focus on topics that are of interest in both China and the United States and feature rigorous, current research by leading scholars and policy experts. 

The conference program will consist of both invited presentations and contributed papers focusing on how AI has affected financial markets and how these effects may evolve in the future. James Poterba (MIT and NBER) and Yongxiang Wang (SAIF) will organize the program. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: 

  • The impact of investment in AI and supporting technologies, such as electric power infrastructure, on corporate earnings and share prices through direct effects of investment spending as well as follow-on effects on labor productivity and innovation.
  • The effects of AI on the portfolio choices and trading behavior of various financial market participants, including retail investors, high-frequency institutional investors, and long-horizon investors such as pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.
  • The role of AI in creating new measures of economic activity that might supplement or in time replace traditional measures of economic and financial market activity.
  • The uses of AI in the design and implementation of financial market regulation and in the monitoring and detection of financial risks more generally.
  • The consequences of AI for the financial advice industry.
  • The macroeconomic effects of AI on economy-wide discount rates through channels such as the rate of aggregate productivity growth and shifts in the distribution of wealth and income.
     

The conference will emphasize papers that provide either theoretical analysis of, or empirical evidence on, ways in which AI has affected, or may affect, capital markets and their participants. The organizers are particularly interested in papers that address topics that have cross-cutting interest in both China and the United States. Papers by researchers who are early in their careers and by researchers who do not have affiliations with either the NBER or SAIF are welcome. 

To submit a paper for potential presentation, please send a PDF file no later than 11:59pm ET on Thursday, February 26, 2026 (12:59pm on Friday February 27, 2026 in Shanghai) to nber@saif.sjtu.edu.cn.

The virtual conference will be held in two segments, one from 8:00–11:00pm (US Eastern Time) on Monday June 15, 2026, the other from 8:00–11:00am ET on Tuesday June 16, 2026. Please address questions about this meeting to nber@saif.sjtu.edu.cn.