Economics and Technological Economics

Recommended Prerequisites

The successful completion of the curricular unit “Economics of Technological Innovation” presupposes that students have basic knowledge of microeconomic and macroeconomic analysis about the processes related with the creation, the organization and the development of productive and technological activities. It is also advisable the existence of elementary competencies in the reading of English texts.

Teaching Methods

The classes have a theoretical and practical nature that combines the complementarities of two teaching methodologies:

One methodology is more related to theoretical explanations of concepts and analytical tools used in economics of innovation to understand the questions studied in the four chapters of the syllabus.

The other methodology is more oriented to encourage empirical researches and the creation of ideas about specific problems of the current technological and economic context that can be studied through the papers written by students.

Learning Outcomes

Overall objectives

To apply conceptual and methodological frameworks of economics to the analysis of innovation processes in order to identify the relationships between the multiple dimensions of the economic and technological changes.

Specific objectives

To develop an economic understanding about the main factors, diversities, trends, opportunities and threats of the recent innovation processes.

Generic competencies

Cognitive and methodological capacities to reach to a better comprehension about economic dynamics and about the systemic nature of the current economic and technological context.

Specific competencies

Instrumental competencies for analysis and synthesis, for organisation and planning and for oral and written communication; interpersonal competencies for critical and self-critical communication; systemic competencies for learning, for researching, for applying knowledge in practice and for generating new ideas.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Chapter 1. Entrepreneurial activities and innovative capabilities.

Chapter 2. Innovation, economic growth and employment.

Chapter 3. Internationalization, economic spaces and innovative capabilities.

Chapter 4. Public policies and evaluation of innovative capacities.

Head Lecturer(s)

João José Soares Tolda

Assessment Methods

Final assessment
Exam: 100.0%

Continuous assessment
Exam: 25.0%
Research work: 75.0%

Bibliography

AMABLE, Bruno; GUELLEC, Dominique, «Les théories de la croissance endogène», Revue d’Economie Politique, Vol. 102, nº 3 (mai-juin 1992) p. 313-377. [PP 103]
FAGERBERG, Jan; MOWERY, David C.; NELSON, Richard (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Innovation, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005. [BP 330. 3 FRE]
FREEMAN, Chris; SOETE, Luc, The Economics of Industrial Innovation, London, Continuum, 2000.
TOLDA, João, Lições de Economia da Inovação Tecnológica, Coimbra, FEUC, 2013 [BP 330. 341 TOL].