Ekonomisk historia: Innovationsekonomi

This course covers several areas of innovation economics, such as their characteristics, their driving forces of innovation and how innovation affects economic growth. It covers several sub-themes, such as:
Market structures and innovation - describes how competitive structures and imperfect competition may induce innovation in different industries.
Institutions and innovation - drawing on the systems of innovation literature, this theme addresses how the institutional framework affects innovation. Some of these aspects are related to national innovation systems (NIS), a concept for comparative analysis of innovative performance. Innovation processes and interdependencies within a more local or regional context are further analysed focusing on regional innovation systems (RIS). In addition to governing structures we address the role of different instruments such as standards, prizes and intellectual property rights such as patents for promoting innovation.
Diffusion - implications of why innovation spreads and how it spreads into the economic environment form different perspectives. Concepts discussed include adoption, imitation and spillovers. We consider the relatively new field of network economics as well.
The role of innovation in economic growth - examines the role of innovation in economic growth through processes related to radical innovations, general purpose technologies, competence blocks and development blocks.