Basics of Innovation Economics
Module No: 5210-231
Room: HS G-B03
Time: Wednesday 12:00-14:00
In the major topic Innovation Economics students will become familiar with most recent approaches in innovation research in economics and management. Innovation phenomena are complex and difficult to be integrated in standard economics reasoning. In particular, innovation is responsible for change and development and requires the consideration of “true uncertainty”. This makes economic decision making for firms as well as for policy actors extremely difficult. Knowledge has to be developed internally and combined with knowledge acquired from external sources like universities and other basic research institutions but also from other firms, sometimes direct competitors. In many cases the traditional price competition has to be replaced by innovation competition shaping economic relations in a knowledge-based economy. The course introduces to the major concepts in innovation economics and deals with the idea of an experimentally organized economy in which beyond optimization approaches, prevailing in mainstream economics, also trial-and-error behavior becomes central for understanding the dynamics of innovation processes.
Structure:
Part I: Introduction
Innovation Economics as an Economics’ Discipline
The History of Technological Evolution and the Scientific Revolution
Technological Development in Economics
3.1. The History of Economic Thinking on Innovation and Technological Progress
3.2. Innovation and technological Development in a Historical Perspective
Part II: Basic Notions
4. The Key Concepts in Innovation Economics
5. Important Schools in Innovation Economics
Part III: Empirics
6. Technological Indicators and their Meaning
7. Innovation Activities and technological Progress – an empirical view
Part IV: Theory
8. Microeconomics I: Optimal Innovation
9. Microeconomics II: Innovation as an Experimental Process
10. Macroeconomics: Innovation and endogenous Growth
Part V: Comprehensive Neo-Schumpeterian Economics