João Tavares & Verónica R. | Giovanni Dosi

Lecture 2: The Economics of Technological Change and Selected Heterodox Schools of Economic Thought

The lecture covers the following:

-Orthodox vs Heterodox schools of economics

-Relation between innovation studies, macroeconomics, political economy and underdevelopment

-Adam Smith, Vebelen, Marx to Schumpeter, Schumpeterian trilogy

-Exogenous to Endogenous growth models

-The evolutionary critique of the neoclassical economics (G.Dosi and Nelson & Winter)

Chris Freeman was deeply  concerned about the role the innovation literature played within economics. The researches that intended to compare it with other strands of the economic literature point at  the importance of opening the “black box” of innovation with special attention in micro-dynamics of technological change and firm theory, against the exogenous understanding of the innovation process from the neoclassical literature. However important this initiative was - and still is - fewer attention was given to the role played by innovation when compared to Keynesian-style effective demand literature and (LA) structuralists approaches,both  important instruments to analyze the unfolding of a variety of economic processes in underdeveloped countries - such as macroeconomy, structural change, technological development, international trade, political economy and inequality. The objective of the lecture is to provide the audience tools to consistently articulate innovation literature with macroeconomic and structuralist approaches. In order to do this, we will scrutinize some of the important debates within the innovation literature on the matter and present selected theories that we believe help us overcome some of the challenges it faces. By doing this, the students will be better able to understand the potentialities and scopus of the innovation literature, as well as their boundaries and limits. At the end of the lecture, we expect that the audience will be able to find new ways to critically discuss the role played by the economics of technological change within the broader history of economic thought.

The chair:

Giovanni Dosi is professor of economics at the Institute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa. He also serves as co-director of the ‘Industrial Policy’ and ‘Intellectual Property Rights’ task forces at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University. Additionally, Professor Dosi is a continental Europe editor of the journal Industrial and Corporate Change. He is included in the ISI Highly Cited Research list, denoting those who made fundamental contributions to the advancement of science and technology, and is a corresponding member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the first academy of sciences in Italy.

In 2016, he received the Wiley TIM Distinguished Scholar Award by the Technology and Innovation Management Division of the American Academy of Management.

A selection of his works has been published in two volumes: Innovation, Organization and Economic Dynamics. Selected Essays (2000), and Economic Organization, Industrial Dynamics and Development: Selected Essays (2012) both published by Edward Elgar.

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Speakers:

João Marcos Hausmann Tavares João Marcos Hausmann Tavares is a professor of economics at Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF – Instituto de Educação de Angra dos Reis/IEAR). He holds a Phd in economics, master’s in Public Policies, Strategies and Development, and an undergraduate degree in economics, all from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). His doctoral thesis was awarded 2nd place in “Prêmio Brasil de Economia 2018” (COFECON). His current research is focused on the Brazilian Crisis and its relation with political economy studies. He has served as a substitute professor of Brazilian economics and introduction to economics at UFRJ. He is also a researcher in the research group RedeSist/UFRJ, and, occasionally, serves as a collaborating professor with the Management and Innovation Graduate Program of Fiocruz. His major interests include: political economy, international political economy, Brazilian economy, innovation policies, national innovation systems and comparative development.

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Verónica Robert is fellow researcher at National Council of Technical and Scientific Research (CONICET) and at National University of San Martin (UNSAM), in Argentina. She obtained her Doctoral Degree at Buenos Aires University. Her thesis was awarded the Raúl Prebicsh national prize given oy by the Central Bank of Rep. Argentina. The main topic of her research is the relation between innovation, development and structural change. 

Verónica Robert heads the Research Office of the Institute of Advance Studies in Social Science at UNSAM, and she is the Director of the Centre for Studies on Economics and Development at IDEAS-UNSAM. She has led five research projects and has participated in more than 20. She also has been a consultant for ECLAC, ILO and WB. 

Since 2005, she has published more than 50 publications as books, journal articles, and book chapters 

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Moderator:  

Dr. Nanditha Mathew is a Researcher with UNU-MERIT. She obtained her PhD in Economics from the University of Pisa in 2016. Before joining UNU-MERIT, she was a Post-doctoral fellow at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa and at the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy (in Florence). In the past years, Nanditha has done consulting work for the Asian Development Bank (ADB), United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the CarHer research interests focus broadly on the microeconomics of innovation and development, in detail, on firm-level R&D investment, firm performance, strategy, and innovation policy. In June 2017, Nanditha won the International Schumpeter Society (ISS) Prize for the best paper presented at the EMAEE Conference in Strasbourg, for her work on “First Movers vs Fast Followers: Who performs better?". Some of her works have been published in international peer-reviewed journals such as the Research Policy, Industrial and Corporate Change and Journal of Evolutionary Economics.ibbean (UN-ECLAC) and MEFOP in Rome. 

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