Venue:The international conference hall(2nd floor) of the Tsang Hin-chi Science Museum of Jinan University.

Contact:+86 20 85220050

In our lives, we often hear the word “capacity”, such as cognitive capacity, social capacity, self-control capacity, etc. All capacities play important roles in the economic and social activities, but core capacities (like cognitive capacity, personalities, health and so on) are the source of these capacities. Studies have shown that core abilities have influences on every aspect of people's lives, low capacities cause many of the major social problems, such as dropping out of school, obesity, crime and other issues. Childhood is thought to be the most important period to form core capacities, the childhood environment and education is considered to be the main factors influencing cognitive and emotional capacities. Given that the child's education is the education with the highest rate of return and great investments have been made to adult education but little gained, investing in early childhood education seems important. Children's education is not optimistic in China--- a large number of left-behind children and lack of good early education of migrant children, which deserve our attention and discussion.

So, how core capacities are formed, how is it affecting our development? How do we conduct interesting researches and experiences to tackle these problems? For the present situation, what measures should be taken? Professor James Heckman, the Nobel Prize Winner in economics will state his views on human development from the economic perspective and have a discussion with us.

Brief introduction to the lecturer

Professor James J. Heckman, born in 1944 in Chicago, has a special interest to mathematics at an early age. For his undergraduate degree, he studied at the Department of mathematics of Colorado College, earned a doctorate in economics from Princeton University in 1971. Professor Heckman taught in Colombia University and Yale University. From 1995, he serves as Henry Schultz distinguished professor of economics in the University of Chicago. As the founder of micro-econometrics, he has contributed much to the principles and methods of selective sampling. Together with Daniel McFadden, he was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in economics.

Heckman's research fields are wide, covering such areas like social project evaluation, non-contiguous selection and the econometric model of longitudinal data. In addition to the significant contribution to micro-econometric theory, Professor Heckman also conducted a number of in-depth case studies in labor supply and wage decisions, periods of unemployment, labour market counselling scheme benefits assessment, reproductive number, gender discrimination, obtaining fruitful results. He has come to China for several times. He has a strong interest in China's labor markets, education, women’s employment issues and puts forward his original insights.