Research in Economics (MECS-560-3)
This course introduces first-year PhD students to the economics research environment. With an emphasis on breadth, and minimal prerequisite knowledge at the graduate level, students are exposed to the process of forming and answering research questions. The course involves multiple faculty providing their perspective on successful approaches to research by highlighting significant recent works in their respective fields of interest.
Technology and Innovation ll (MECS-549-2)
This course establishes fundamental ways in which ideas differ from other goods, then uses these concepts to evaluate the origins of innovation, economic growth, firm dynamics, entrepreneurship, innovation clusters, and the diffusion of new technology. The course substantially reviews core empirical literature, including methods and data sets that are suited to studying ideas and innovation.
Innovation Economics and the Science of Science (MECS-548-0)
Innovation touches many fields, including virtually all fields of economics -- whether economic growth, industrial organization, labor economics, health, finance, trade, or urban economics. As such, the course provides important foundations for PhD students in economics across many sub-disciplines, as well as students studying innovation strategy, organizational behavior, creativity, entrepreneurship, and science policy from different disciplinary perspectives. In tandem with theoretical approaches, this course substantially reviews core empirical literature, including empirical methods and an expanding set of remarkable data sets that are suited to studying ideas and innovation. This PhD course also provides an inroad to the growing field of the “science of science,†which emphasizes the use of high-scale data, network methods, and machine learning, together with more traditional econometric approaches, to understand the science and innovation process and implications for society.â€
