Магистратура
2025/2026
Инновации и рост
Статус:
Курс по выбору (Экономика и экономическая политика)
Кто читает:
Департамент прикладной экономики
Где читается:
Факультет экономических наук
Когда читается:
2-й курс, 1 модуль
Охват аудитории:
для всех кампусов НИУ ВШЭ
Преподаватели:
Бесстремянная Галина Евгеньевна
Язык:
английский
Кредиты:
3
Контактные часы:
28
Course Syllabus
Abstract
According to the OECD, “an innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organizational method in business practices, work place organization or external relations” (OECD, 2005, paragraph 146); and “a new or improved product is implemented when it is introduced on the market. New processes, marketing methods or organisational methods are implemented when they are brought into actual use in the firm’s operations” (OECD, 2005, paragraph 150).
The purpose of this applied course is to study various concepts associated with economic growth through the aforementioned types of innovation. A special emphasis is given to learning the major issues related to economics of innovation and to acquiring the knowledge of theoretical and applied methods for conducting research on innovation. The agenda dealing with economics of innovation includes: types of innovation; drivers of innovation and outcomes of innovation; protection of intellectual property rights; measuring quality of innovation; incentives to innovate; financing and government support of innovation; datasets to analyze innovation at the macro and micro level.
The macroeconomic part of the course focuses on the theoretical and empirical aspects of growth models with technological change. This included the exogenous growth models and the Schumpeterian endogenous growth models. Here we analyze approaches to incorporate various forms of company innovative activity and to introduce different instruments of public policy. Finally, we dwell on the modern concept of green innovation as analyzed at the macro level within endogenous growth models and at the micro level in the studies of firm production.
Special features of the course are: the emphasis on applied econometric techniques and the work with macro and micro datasets.
Learning Objectives
- The purpose of the course is to teach students the major concepts associated with economics of innovation and to show how these concepts are interrelated with the growth at the country level and at the company level. The students will learn definition of various types of innovation, the incentives of firms and the government as regards fostering innovation and improving the quality of innovation. The students will also acquire the knowledge of modern approaches to modeling economic growth through innovation. The course covers methods of applied economic analysis of the policy changes in various countries, the examples of policy interventions and the determinants of their success. A special attention will be given to the development of the research and analytical skills through work with real world empirical data in order to answer the research questions about innovation and growth. The list of econometric techniques analyzed at lectures and sections covers: • cross section and panel data analysis, • instrumental variable analysis (with the special emphasis on the relevance and validity of instruments), • dynamic panel data analysis.
Expected Learning Outcomes
- Students will gain knowledge of publicly available and proprietary databases on economic growth and innovation (data at the country, company and patent levels)
- Students will learn about empirical methods of cross-sectional, time series, and panel data regression analysis for measuring growth and productivity.
- Acquire skills in critically reviewing literature, taking into account the contrast between theoretical and empirical approaches, specifications, identification methods, and empirical assessments obtained in various works
Course Contents
- Introduction to the course. What is innovation? Economic history of innovation. Empirical studies of innovative activity, drivers of innovation, outcomes of innovation.
- Intellectual property rights, innovation, growth and development
- Incentives and innovation
- Patent statistics and the quality of innovation. Heterogeneous innovation. NBER patent database
- Classical models of innovation and growth: exogenous growth models with technological change. Gross domestic product and production. Variation in gross domestic product of various countries: productivity and technological change.
- Endogenous growth models with innovation
- Energy, environment and technological change
- National systems of innovation, innovation in Russia
Assessment Elements
- Homework 1Homework is individual work (no group work is allowed). Student’s work during the course is largely focused on studying various aspects of economic growth through technological change in a country chosen by the student. Each student may choose any country for such work. Homework assignment will require applying the textbook codes from Soderbom et al. (2015) to the most recent data series for this country.
- Homework2Homework is individual work (no group work is allowed). Student’s work during the course is largely focused on studying various aspects of economic growth through technological change in a country chosen by the student. Each student may choose any country for such work. Homework assignment will require applying the textbook codes from Soderbom et al. (2015) to the most recent data series for this country
- ParticipationWork in class in discussing and replicating published papers on innovation and growth There will be 8 hours of empirical sections. Work at sections will be devoted to an acquisition of the following skills: • Knowledge of publicly available and proprietary databases on economic growth and innovation (the country level, the company level and patent level data), • Empirical techniques of cross-section, time-series and panel data regression analysis for measuring growth and productivity, • Critical review of the literature in view of contrasting theoretical and empirical approaches, specifications, methods of identification, and empirical estimates obtained in various papers, Sections with acknowledge the students with major international databases related to economics of innovation and growth and applied techniques for econometric analysis, with an application to estimating inequality, measuring economic growth and conducting policy evaluation. The in-class work at sections related to homework assignment will be focused on learning to understand the empirical techniques and codes, supplied to the textbook Soderbom et al. (2015) “Empirical Development Economics” and to run them with the datasets, which accompany the book. The tentative plan is to cover Chapter 1, 6, 8 and 11 (in-depth), and 24-26 (general overview). The Chapters deal with the following issues: • Comparing growth through increasing capital intensity, technological change and investment in human capital across various countries. • Disentangling the strategy of catch-up growth and evaluating the convergence of countries in view of their economic indicators and technologies. Cross-section and panel data analysis. • Testing the hypotheses about the exogenous or endogenous growth. Time series analysis. • Using instrumental variable approach for dealing with endogeneity in the analysis of growth. Panel data models and dynamic panel data models. • Estimating productivity and efficiency of firms through the analysis of the production and cost function. Students will be explained how to employ the most recent versions of Penn World Table and combine them with the IMF, World Bank and UNDP statistics, as well as with proprietary databases (e.g. Barro and Lee data on educational attainment across the world). By merging the datasets, the students will create most recent data series for a country, which they choose to work with during the course for completing their homework assignments. Other in-class work at sections will cover such topics as - Necessity of patent laws at the developed countries and at the countries with the catch-up growth. - Incentives to innovate and the social origins of inventors. - “Brain drain”: immigration from the Soviet Union and innovation.
- Final testFinal test will consist of a list of open questions, which cover the material of the lectures and sections. Final test is a closed book 1 hour 20 minute test.
