ECON0055: Economics of Science

General structure of the Course

• How do Science and Technology affect human productivity and how does Economic activity fund Science and Technology?

• What is the nature of the “goods” and services involved in Science and Technology and how does that affect its Economics?

• How does the reward-structure of Science & Technology relate to the specifics of these disciplines?

• How do discipline-relevant choices get made by the agents (scientists / engineers) in these disciplines?

Some of these themes. Particularly the first two, fit very neatly with what I will call “traditional Economics of Science”. This is for example the case when we consider the role of scientific and technological progress in the emergence of economic growth.

Some of these themes, particularly the last two, tread on ground more commonly covered in “Philosophy of Science” modules. This is the case, for example, when we consider the notion of paradigmatic change in a Science and look for models to describe such changes.

Some themes, like the middle one, will be viewed and discussed from both a “traditional” perspective as well as from viewpoints embedded more firmly in the actual working and requirements of the discipline. Traditionally there has been a lot of research and debate on the degree to which scientists and engineers respond to financial incentives. But we will also cover in depth the role of non-financial incentives such as reputational and priority-rewards.

Key skills

• The ability to analyse and think creatively about Science, Technology and Innovation and their role in the Economy;

• The ability to analyse and discuss the interactions between financial, ‘economic’ and ‘scientific’ or ‘technological’ incentives influencing the choices made by agents working in these fields;

• the ability to analyse and debate the characteristics of scientific and technological knowledge and the impact these have on the nature of science, engineering, and their economies;

You will be able to emphasize for yourself whether you want to develop these skills mostly in a modelling & simulation fashion, or in a discursive and argumentative fashion.

An immediate consequence of the fact that ECON0055 will teach, train, and assess you in these key skills, while allowing you a lot of freedom to choose the quantitative/qualitative flavour that best suits you, is that the marking-schemes will reward creativity, precision, attention to detail and originality. The problems in exams and problem sets will typically ask you to define the problem, interpret a question/instruction, explain your approach (or code), and analyse the results.

The topics per week

Summative & Formative Assessment

Formative Assessment

• some reading of (parts of) research papers or book,

• some independent research, and

• some computational work using Mathematica.