From March 14 to 15, 2025, the Conference on Frontiers of Measurement and Formation of Skills was successfully held at Jinan University. This interdisciplinary Conference cohosted by IESR and the Center for the Economics of Human Development (CEHD) assembles members of a group working on measuring and forming skills for children and young adults.
More than 15 scholars from renowned institutions, such as the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Minnesota, Georgia State University, the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, the University of Bonn, the Educational Testing Service, the City University of Hong Kong, and the Research Institute for Policy Evaluation and Design, attended the event.
Workshop Participants
The Conference was chaired by Professor Shuaizhang Feng, Dean of IESR, and Professor James J. Heckman, the 2000 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics and the Chair of IESR’s Advisory Board. It marked the eighth time Professor Heckman has visited Jinan University since 2016.
Professor Shuaizhang Feng
Professor James J. Heckman
In the presentation session, twelve scholars presented their latest works.
Patrick Kyllonen from Educational Testing Service presented papers titled Direct Assessments, Integrating AI and Human Intelligence, and Multidimensional Forced-Choice Assessment: Advantages and Challenges.
Glenn Harrison from Georgia State University presented papers titled Gender, Confidence, and the Mismeasure of Intelligence, Competitive and Literacy, Belief Distributions, Bayes’ Rule and Bayesian Overconfidence, and The Gambling Animal: Some Evolutionary Evidence on Soft Skills.
Sebastian Schneider from the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods presented papers titled Measuring Utility - An Application to Measuring (Higher-Order) Risk Preference and Risk Preferences and Field Behavior: The Relevance of Higher-Order Risk Preferences.
Thomas Dohmen from the University of Bonn presented a paper titled Accounting for Individual-Specific Reliability of Self-Assessed Measures of Economic Preferences and Personality Traits.
Jinyi Zhang from the University of Minnesota presented a paper titled The Minnesota Study of Executive Function and Predictors of STEM Outcomes.
Shuaizhang Feng, Yujie Han from Jinan University, and Zhe Yang from Liaoning University jointly introduced the data and related research of the Longitudinal Study of Children’s Development in Mianzhu.
Tee Kilenthong from the Research Institute for Policy Evaluation and Design presented a paper titled Do Caregivers' Time and Risk Preferences Affect Their Child Investment and Education Expectation?
Jin Zhou from the City University of Hong Kong presented a paper titled A Study of the Microdynamics of Early Childhood Learning.
James Heckman from the University of Chicago presented a paper titled Dynamic Complementarity and Autogenesis.
The event ended with fruitful discussions, greatly enhancing the cutting-edge research exchanges on the measurement and formation of skills for children and young adults.
