From July 1 to 5, 2024, a team of students and faculty members from the College of Economics, Xiamen University visited the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Cross-National Data Center in Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, to participate in the 32nd LIS Summer Workshop. The team was led by Prof. Shaohua Chen, Prof. Qinghua Zhao, and Assistant Prof. Jialiang Zhu, and team members include Assistant Engineer Jinsong Liu, and PhD students Li Chen, Liecheng Qiao and Mengqian Ye.
The workshop focused on the comparative study of global income, wealth and socio-economic data. During the five-day period, a total of 23 lectures were given, and the participants actively exchanged views with scholars from different countries and regions. Scholars including Prof. Ravi Kanbur from Cornell University, Prof. Janet Gornick from City University of New York, Prof. Louis Chauvel from University of Luxembourg, and Prof. Philippe Van Kerm from University of Luxembourg gave excellent presentations on various topics such as the collection and processing of income and wealth data, income inequality, and comparative study of global income, wealth and socio-economic data. In addition, Prof. Qinghua Zhao had an in-depth discussion with Marc Cigrang, one of the founders of LIS, and the designer and architect of LISSY data system, about data collection and processing, server architecture, data security and system design, etc.
Prof. Qinghua Zhao and Assistant Engineer Jinsong Liu with Marc Cigrang (second from left), one of the founders of LIS, and Teresa Munzi (third from left), Director of Operations of LIS
LIS is a non-profit organisation registered in Luxembourg. Formerly known as The Luxembourg Income Study, LIS is a data archive and research center dedicated to cross-national analysis and is home to two databases: The Luxembourg Income Study Database (LIS), the largest available income database of harmonised microdata collected from about 50 countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Australasia spanning five decades, and The Luxembourg Wealth Study Database (LWS), the only cross-national wealth microdatabase in existence. For more than 30 years, LIS has organized the LIS Introductory Summer Workshop, held in Luxembourg, in order to ease the access to data on income and wealth. This year, the LIS Summer Workshop on “Comparative Inequality Measurement using the LIS & LWS Databases”, is a one-week intensive course designed to introduce researchers in the social sciences to comparative research on income and wealth distribution, employment and social policy, using the harmonised LIS and LWS Databases. The Paula and Gregory Chow Institute for Studies in Economics, Xiamen University and LIS entered a collaboration agreement in July 2023, and have been carrying out various collaborative activities ever since.
