Recently, the College of Economics at Xiamen University signed a collaboration agreement with the I.S.E.O. Institute (Institute for Studies on Economics and Occupation) in Italy. The two parties are committed to engaging in in-depth collaboration in academic research, talent cultivation, faculty and student exchanges, and high-level academic events. This partnership offers more opportunities for the college’s outstanding students and young faculty members to shine on the international academic stage, enriching the college’s academic exchange and cooperation network in Europe.
The I.S.E.O. Institute is a non-profit foundation based in Iseo (Northern Italy) and created in 1998 by Nobel Laureate in Economics Franco Modigliani. The main goal of the association is that of promoting the analysis and the discussion about the world economy, focusing the interest on topics which are also connected to social aspects such as development, sustainability, inequalities and employment issues. Upon Franco’s death, Prof. Robert Solow (Nobel Laureate in Economics 1987) accepted with great enthusiasm to chair the Institute Modigliani founded and therefore to carry on his work. Today the honorary chairman of the foundation is Prof. Michael Spence (Nobel Laureate in Economics 2001). Following Franco Modigliani’s idea and with the precious support of Prof. Robert Solow, in 2004 I.S.E.O. organized the first edition of an international Summer School reserved to graduate students of Economics and Social Sciences which still takes place every year in Iseo, in June. Throughout the years, the I.S.E.O. Summer School became the most well-known activity of the I.S.E.O. Institute, which thanks to this summer course, started being popular and renowned in the academic environment all over the world. Participants of the I.S.E.O. Summer School are generally graduate and postgraduate students, young researchers coming from every corner of the world.
According to the agreement, the I.S.E.O. Institute will annually reserve certain guaranteed admission slots for doctoral and master’s students as well as young faculty members from the College of Economics, Xiamen University to attend the I.S.E.O. Summer School, along with tuition discounts. The Paula and Gregory Chow Institute for Studies in Economics at Xiamen University will serve as the lead unit responsible for the selection and recommendation of participants, ensuring that candidates possess outstanding academic potential and research capabilities.
In the future, the two sides also plan to expand their scope of cooperation, including scholar exchanges and joint academic conferences, to further deepen academic ties between China and Italy in the field of economics.
In recent years, the College of Economics at Xiamen University, guided by the goal of serving national strategies, has been continuously expanding its high-level global academic network. In building high-end international academic platforms, the Paula and Gregory Chow Institute for Studies in Economics has signed a cooperation agreement with QuantEcon, an international academic platform in quantitative economics founded by 2011 Nobel laureate Professor Thomas Sargent, to jointly establish an open, collaborative, world-class large-scale online learning platform for quantitative economics. In the area of international talent cultivation and academic exchanges, the college has established long-term and stable cooperative relationships with more than 30 overseas universities and academic institutions, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), the University of Ottawa (Canada), Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands), Durham University (UK), the University of Southampton (UK), University College Dublin (Ireland), Aarhus University (Denmark), the University of Antwerp (Belgium), Bocconi University (Italy), LIS (Luxembourg Income Study), and the Chinese Economic Association (UK/Europe). Among these, three international talent training projects are eligible for funding from the China Scholarship Council’s “Innovative Talent International Training Program”: the joint doctoral training program with the School of Business and Economics at Humboldt University of Berlin (IRTG), the “Economics of Globalization and European Integration” program (EGEI), and the collaborative program with Singapore Management University in econometrics talents nurturing. The new cooperation with the I.S.E.O. Institute will create synergies with the existing collaborations, expanding and diversifying the college’s academic network in Europe.
