Beliefs, Attention, and Investments in Early Childhood

Thursday, May 14

12:00pm – 1:15pm

PTGMT

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CEPA and Lemann Center bring you Ed Policy Seminar Series, "Beliefs, Attention, and Investments in Early Childhood," featuring guest speaker Flavio Cunha, Professor of Economics at Rice University. ABSTRACT: Authors Flavio Cunha, Snejana Nihtianova, Jessica Rood, and Anja-Lize van der Merwe, develop a model of parental investment in early childhood in which bandwidth-constrained parents hold distorted beliefs about the returns to responsive interaction. When capacity falls short of aspiration, motivated reasoning provides relief: the parent distorts her working belief downward, rationalizing low engagement. Distorted beliefs suppress responsive parenting, which generates no calibration evidence, which, in turn, confirms the distortion. The model identifies four channels through which interventions escape this self-sealing trap. A randomized controlled trial confirms the model's predictions on parental beliefs, measures of responsive parenting, behavioral engagement, and absence of impact on materials or placebo outcomes. GET TO KNOW THE SPEAKER: Flavio Cunha is the Ervin K. Zingler Chair and Professor of Economics at Rice University and Director of the Center for Economic Mobility. His research focuses on how early childhood experiences shape long-term outcomes in health, learning, and economic opportunity, and how investments in young children and families can make a lasting difference. He is a recipient of the Frisch Medal from the Econometric Society and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. *** LUNCH opens at 11:30am followed by the seminar at 12pm. Open to Stanford and GSE Community.

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