bank to issue a retail cbdc within months of experiencing one of the strongest hurricanes, as they sought to restore financial access to areas impacted by the event. these technologies have also spawned volatile investment instruments such as crypto - assets and stablecoins whose existence may accelerate the thrust among central bankers towards retail cbdc issuance. the discussion on cbdcs raises several issues, including are they inevitable in the digital age and will they impact financial stability. our panellists will address these key issues, providing a spring board for discussions of our research papers which cover traditional areas, including growth, debt, financial sector innovation, and public sector reform. all areas worthy of thoughtful and thorough examination. we hope that by bringing our best minds together to provide their local, regional and global perspectives, we can provide solutions through our shared experience and expertise to craft practical takeaways for navigating the current global space. i encourage you, whether you are here with us in - person or joining us online, to avail yourself of this opportunity to learn from our presenters, and indeed throughout the four days of this seminar. we hope this year ’ s ars will be not only informative, but also inspiring, as we work to confront the many challenges we as a nation and a region face. i thank you. 3 | page

generation shouldering at least some of that burden, especially in light of the sacrifices that previous generations made to give us the prosperity we enjoy today. the choice of which generations should bear the burden of population aging has consequences for economic efficiency as well as for intergenerational equity. if we decide to pass the burden on to future generations - that is, if we neither increase saving now nor reduce the benefits to be paid in the future by social security and medicare - then the children and grandchildren of the baby boomers are likely to face much higher tax rates. a large increase in tax rates would surely have adverse effects on a wide range of economic incentives, including the incentives to work and save, which would hamper economic performance. alternatively, to avoid large tax increases, the government could decide to sharply reduce non - entitlement spending in the future. however, such actions might also have important social costs that need to be taken into consideration. sharing the burden of population aging if, as a nation, we were to accept the premise that the baby - boom generation should share at least some of the burden of population aging, what policy steps might be implied? as i have already noted, from a broad economic perspective, the most useful actions are likely to be those that promote national saving. perhaps the most straightforward way to raise national saving - although not a politically easy one - is to reduce the government ’ s current and projected budget deficits. to the extent that reduced government borrowing allows more private saving to be used for capital formation or to acquire foreign assets, future u. s. output and income will be enhanced and the future burdens associated with demographic change will be smaller. increasing private saving, which is the saving of both the corporate sector and the household sector, is likewise desirable. corporate saving, in the form of retained earnings, is currently at relatively high levels, but household saving rates are exceptionally low. 3 a broad - based increase in household saving would benefit both the economy and the millions of american families who currently hold very little wealth. unfortunately, many years of concentrated attention on this issue by policymakers and economists have failed to uncover a silver bullet for increasing household saving. one promising area that deserves more attention is financial education. the federal reserve has actively supported such efforts, which may be useful in helping people understand the importance of saving and to learn about alternative saving vehicles. psychologists have also studied how the framing of alternatives affects people ’ s saving decisions. for example, studies suggest that employees