UNCTAD’s 8th World Investment Forum took place in Abu Dhabi from October 16-20, 2023. The event gathered 8,000 participants, including government officials, international organization representatives, policymakers, investors, sovereign wealth funds managers, key capital markets actors, and academics. It was designed to facilitate dialogue and action on the world’s current and emerging investment-development challenges. The Forum focused on the need to invest in food security, energy, health, supply chain resilience, and productive capacity growth in the poorest countries. The overarching theme of the conference program was “Investing for Sustainable Development.”
Since 2014, AIB has collaborated with UNCTAD in this bi-annual forum, contributing to the academic part of the Forum and presenting papers and panels as part of the program. This collaboration has been a way for AIB to promote policy-related research in international business. Ari Van Assche and Rob Grosse led the AIB effort in planning and participating in an expanded number of activities in this year’s Forum.
AIB had a strong presence at the conference, with 16 members participating in high-level panels. Ari Van Assche represented AIB in the academic opening panel, while Sarianna Lundan, Paul Vaaler, and Xiaolan Fu took part in the closing academic panel. AIB also organized four panels in the academic track co-organized by Rob Grosse and Ari Van Assche. These panels aimed to distill and transfer new research insights to the practitioner communities. Both younger and more senior scholars participated in these sessions. Additionally, “fire-side chats” were used to offer an AIB scholar and a business practitioner or government policymaker the opportunity to informally discuss a topic in the broad area of Investment in Sustainable Development in front of an audience.
Prior to the Forum, AIB issued a call for proposed Ph.D. theses related to the conference theme. Four promising Ph.D. students received AIB support to attend the conference, and they were joined by two additional Ph.D. candidates from the AIB community. All six students presented their work in poster sessions and assisted the academic program management during the week, including the staffing of the AIB booth.
Kristin Brandl has been spending a part of her sabbatical at UNCTAD in Geneva and played an instrumental role in the planning and operation of the AIB activities. She demonstrated AIB’s commitment to the IB policy sphere. AIB is grateful to Kristin for her significant contribution.
The World Investment Forum provided AIB with a platform to showcase its presence in the investment policy arena and enabled the AIB professors and Ph.D. students to participate in other sessions involving government policymakers and business leaders. AIB extends its gratitude to James Zhan, Richard Bolwijn, and Amelia Santos-Paulino from UNCTAD for giving AIB the opportunity to actively participate in the conference, and looks forward to the next Forum in 2025.
This conference report was written and edited by Robert Grosse and Ari Van Assche for inclusion in the 31 October 2023 edition of the AIB Newsletter.
