The 58th Xi Xian Forum, sponsored by Zhongnan University of Economics and Law's Innovation and Talent Base for Income Distribution and Public Finance and the School of Public Finance and Taxation, was successfully held on July 5, 2024, in Wenqin Building's Conference Room 119. As the keynote speaker at the 58th Xi Xian Forum, Dorien Emmers, Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of KU Leuven, delivered a speech entitled "Dynamic effects in early capability formation: Evidence from a cluster-randomized parenting experiment in rural China". The event, moderated by Li Shanshan, Researcher at the Innovation and Talent Base for Income Distribution and Public Finance at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL), saw over 10 attendees, including Wan Xin, Associate Professor at the School of Public Finance and Taxation, Zou Wei, Researcher at the Base, and other faculty members and students.
Cluster-randomized control trials were adopted in a two-year parenting training program to monitor its impact on promoting the capability formation of rural Chinese children and achieving dynamic complementarity. It was found that bi-weekly parenting and health guidance interventions provided by community health workers led to an average increase of 0.18 standard deviations in children's skill development after one year and 0.33 standard deviations after two years. The heterogeneity analysis of the impact between subgroups of children with high and low early abilities revealed dynamic self-complementarity between skills in the first year and skill investment productivity two years later, as well as dynamic cross-complementarity between health conditions in the first year and skill investment productivity two years later.
Dr. Dorien Emmers' wonderful speech sparked profound reflections among the faculty members and students present. During the discussion session, the faculty members and students spoke up enthusiastically, engaging in active interactive exchanges on topics such as research background, theoretical model and demonstration.
Speaker Profile
Dorien Emmers is an Assistant Professor at the Chinese Studies Group and the Department of Economics of KU Leuven. She is also an affiliated research scholar of the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI). She previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Stanford SCCEI and as a lecturer on Chinese politics at the KU Leuven Chinese Studies Group.
Dorien completed her Ph. D. in Economics at KU Leuven LICOS — Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance. She previously graduated magna cum laude from the Master of Arts in Sinology and the Master of Science in Research in Economics at KU Leuven. She considers her background in the non-disciplinary-specific study of the Chinese language and area as a perfect complement of the non-area-specific discipline of economics.
Her research interests center around the economics and measurement of human capital formation and social mobility in China. She is involved in the design and evaluation of multiple field experiments testing the effectiveness of early childhood interventions in rural China. She’s currently working on the development of a scalable observation-based assessment for early skill formation in rural China.