Sponsors: CEPR, European Central Bank, Review of Finance and Bocconi University (local host). Guest Editors Elena Carletti, Dirk Niepelt, Marcus M. Opp (Sponsoring RoF Editor), Claudio Tebaldi.
Date and Venue: A two-day conference will take place in Milan on September 25–26, 2025. Deadline for the proposal submission is 21 July 2025.
Keynote speaker: Piero Cipollone, Member of the ECB’s Executive Board and Chair of the Eurosystem High-Level Task Force on the Digital Euro, will deliver the keynote speech.
The programme will feature also policy panels and invited speakers.
Overview
In the early stages of a technological breakthrough, it is often difficult to foresee how the innovation will be used, how rapidly it will evolve, or the magnitude of its impact. This meeting is organised to discuss the transformative role of digital currencies, the new technologies in payment systems and capital markets, with a focus on the innovations that can enhance efficiency, reduce fragmentation, and promote regulatory harmonisation. Integration of these innovations into the existing financial system—and ensuring their widespread adoption—requires the development of a robust institutional and regulatory framework.
In this context, academic research can play a pivotal role by providing the theoretical and empirical foundation needed to understand and navigate potential trade-offs such as the one between privacy preservation and economic efficiency, or to evaluate the costs and benefits of public versus private solutions and the balance between safety and innovation. To promote research on these issues that bear on the economics of digital currencies, the Review of Finance, with the support of CEPR, the European Central Bank and the Fintech Lab, Baffi Centre at Bocconi University, is issuing a call for proposals that will culminate in two research conferences.
Submission of academic contributions
To encourage researchers to engage in innovative, high quality research, the selection of contributions will follow a two-stage process. Successful submissions will be published as part of a Special Issue on ‘The Future of Payments and Digital Capital Markets’ of the Review of Finance.
First stage
In the first stage, authors are asked to submit a proposal or an early stage working paper, which outlines the questions they will address, the methodologies they will use, the model framework they will explore (in the case of theory work) or the data they will gather (in the case of empirical work). Authors are encouraged to offer as much detail as possible on the research design and analyses proposed to interpret the results. The organisers are especially interested in contributions that are useful to characterise the financial and economic impact of Central Bank Digital Currencies, as well as other emerging digital assets, on existing payment and monetary system and on capital markets in order to provide useful guidance for policy-makers and regulators.
Members of a scientific committee and the programme organisers will select the proposals/working papers to be presented during the first event in Milano, Italy on September 25-26, 2025.
Travel and accommodation costs incurred by presenting authors will be covered by the organisers.
Second stage
Papers selected in the first stage will proceed to the next phase with a strong indication of publication potential.
Before the second conference, authors will be required to formally submit their completed papers to the Review of Finance through the journal’s standard submission system (standard submission fees will apply). The papers will undergo full peer review, in which the usual standards for publication of high-quality scholarship in finance apply and must be met.
The second stage will be concluded by another conference to be held in Milano, Italy in April 2026, where the final papers will be presented. This meeting will follow the standard finance conference format. Presentations will describe the original intent and actual execution of the study. Reviewers and the editors will evaluate the result. A positive evaluation will imply publication in the Review of Finance. If a proposal does not successfully move past the first stage, this does not preclude the possibility that a completed paper based on the same idea could be submitted to the Review of Finance using the normal submission process at a later time.
Travel and accommodation costs incurred by presenting authors will again be covered by the organisers.
Paper submission topics
We encourage proposals for both empirical and theoretical research, as well as interdisciplinary submissions. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)
- Economic impact of CBDC in terms of fostering innovation, competition and efficiency in the payments sector.
- Geopolitical Implications of CBDCs: Strategic autonomy, currency competition, and the reshaping of global monetary dynamics.
- CBDCs and Cross-Border Payments: Interoperability, efficiency gains, and implications for international trade and monetary sovereignty.
- Multidisciplinary approaches to CBDC user experience design, including users’ preferences for privacy and resilience.
Resilience, Governance, and Strategic Autonomy
- Operational and Financial Resilience: Development of digital infrastructures that enhance operational transparency and support resilient supply chain finance mechanism.
- Consumer Protection in Digital Finance: Balancing innovation and safeguards in the evolving landscape of digital financial services.
- Digitalisation of money and market power: market power in digital payment market, including the role of network effects, economies of scale and scope.
- Digital Sovereignty: Implications of digital platforms and cross-border infrastructures for national autonomy and regulatory control.
Digital Assets, Payment Infrastructures and Capital Markets
- The role of central bank money as settlement asset and catalyst for convergence in the future of digital capital markets.
- Stablecoins: Financial stability implications of privately issued digital assets.
- Decentralised Finance (DeFi): Digital platforms, decentralisation, and the emergence of new forms of business and governance.
- Regulated Liability Networks (RLNs): Design and implementation of interoperable infrastructures for digital currencies.
- Tokenised Securities: The potential of tokenisation and the evolving architecture of tokenised securities markets.
- Optimal design of programmable ledgers: Coexistence of money and assets in a unique ledger, and the ‘Finternet’.
How to submit
The submission window will be open from 12 May to 21 July 2025
Decisions of acceptance of the proposal will be communicated by 5 August 2025
Authors should submit their proposals via the Editorial Express system, following the standard submission instructions on the Review of Finance website. The upload at Step 5 should include the authors’ names. At Step 6, please select “Registered Report – The Future of Payments”.
The conference organization is fully funded by Bocconi University and the whole initiative is not for profit. A processing charge of €75 is requested by the Review of Finance Editorial office for the submission of each proposal and should be paid directly to their account. The organisers will not consider proposals that are under review at other conferences or at other journals which accept proposal submissions. If authors are uncertain about whether their proposal meets this requirement, it is crucial to alert the editors and inquire before submitting the proposal to the Review of Finance.
The submission should be prepared in two files: one with a cover page including the author names, affiliations, and acknowledgements; and another as an anonymous copy, which does not contain author information and acknowledgements. In the case of a proposal, this should include the following elements:
[1] Title and topic.
[2] Objectives of the study.
[3] Methodology and research design.
[4] Empirical work: data description, proposed tests, key predictions.
[5] Theoretical work: model setup, proposed analysis.
Preliminary results are not pre-requisites for a successful proposal, but they are very welcome and helpful for evaluation. Proposals/working papers will be reviewed and selected for presentation by the scientific committee. Authors of papers published in Review of Finance are required to disclose code and data for replication. Questions about the submission process should be addressed to the editorial office of the Review of Finance ([email protected]). Questions about the first conference in Milano may be addressed to the Conference Manager, Elena Suragni, reachable by email at [email protected].
Organising Committee
- Elena Carletti, Bocconi University and Director of the CEPR Banking and Corporate Finance Program
- Alessandro Giovannini, European Central Bank Adviser to the Digital euro Programme Manager
- Dirk Niepelt University of Bern and Leader of the CEPR Research and Policy Network Fintech and Digital Currencies
- Marcus M. Opp Stockholm School of Economics and Sponsoring Editor, Review of Finance
- Claudio Tebaldi, Bocconi University and Director of the Baffi Fintech Lab.