Knowledge Economics Course Contents

• Origins of Knowledge Economics: Hayek, Fritz Machlup's conception of the knowledge economy
• Production of knowledge, reproduction of knowledge. Knowledge spillovers, knowledge as a public good, intellectual property rights in the knowledge economy.
• Knowledge openness and economic incentives: Virtues and vices of knowledge openness, the tragedy of the commons and the economics of knowledge, institutions supporting knowledge openness, the private benefits of being a knowledge contributor in an open system, incentives to freely reveal knowledge
• Development of knowledge across sectors, public dimension of the knowledge economy
• Theories and models of growth: Von Neumann model, Solow model, Buffalo model, Romer model, Mankiw-Romer-Weil model, Lucas model, Romer's neo-Schumpeterian model
• Asymmetrical information and markets; trade in information markets: How intermediaries resolve coordination problems- bilateral coordination, network coordination: a case study with financial markets; the codification of information dissemination, collateral consequences of codifying human capital, implications for content originators, distributors and consumers, the limits of codification, the dark side of codification.
• Economics of open platforms: [GoogleMaps, Housingmaps, PeopleFinder, Flickr, Technorati], Platform incentive systems and platform dilemmas [Craiglist]
• Platforms for Commerce [Amazon and Hiking Outpost], Platforms for Grassroots Action- Public Disclosure [Toxic release inventory, Scorecard, Pollution Locator], Platforms for Neighborhood Knowledge
• Economics of mass collaboration: Prosumerism-Harnessing prosumer communities, collective intelligence, crowdsourcing- [ Slashdot, Angie's list, Rotten Tomatoes], Consumer controlled media- citizen journalism [digg]; Collaboration in organizing and classifying web content- Folksonomy [Delicious]; Collaborative Science: [Open Wet Ware, Human Genome Project]; Peer production- implications for innovation [Innocentive, yet2.com]
• Knowledge-based theory of the firm, Coase's Law, Economics of Outsourcing
• How the market aggregates information: From information to prices, coordination problems, learning and cascades, the macroeconomics of information
• Wisdom of crowds: the common knowledge effect, information cascades, reputational cascades; Condorcet Jury Theorem; Methods of aggregating information and dispersed knowledge: Prediction markets, surveys, deliberation; Wikis, Open source software and blogs: a comparison with Hayek's price system
• Knowledge and Policy, knowledge and uncertainty; complexity and chaos: implications for design of organizational knowledge systems; community, national and international knowledge systems
• Economics of scientific knowledge production
• Economics of Institutional Research                        
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Manu Rajan
National Centre for Science Information (NCSI)
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore 560 012

email: manu.rajan134@gmail.com