Economic Analysis of Technology

Microeconomics

No prerequisites

Recently the education in different fields of engineering does not contain only the traditional topics of technology, but also elements from economic sciences. Thus engineers will be engaged to understand economic consequences of their decisions. The aim of the present subject is to give an introduction into this field based on empirical investigations as well as on theoretical approaches. After a short introduction it will be shown how basic categories could be used to describe the situation being under consideration. It will be followed by a detailed investigation of the special relationship between technology and costs, again based on empirics and on traditional models. The next block contains questions dealing with the market structure (free competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, etc.), and related topics like multi-product firms and innovations. Finally, the course concludes with a lecture dealing with the strategic decisions of firms based on an introduction to game theory.