Courses on Domain Knowledge

Date: 23 Apr 2023

MPhil: minimum 9 credits of coursework

PhD: minimum 15 credits of coursework

Under this requirement, each student is required to take a required course and other elective courses to form an individualized curriculum relevant to the cross-disciplinary thesis research. To ensure that students will take appropriate courses to equip them with needed domain knowledge, each student has a Program Planning cum Thesis Supervision Committee to approve the courses to be taken soonest after program commencement and no later than the end of the first year. Depending on the approved curriculum, individual students may be required to complete additional credits beyond the minimal credit requirements.

Required Course List

IPEN 5100

Innovation, Policy and Entrepreneurship

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course focuses on the practices and processes that managers in the business sector adopt to advance innovation and attention is also paid to the strategies that policy-makers from regulatory background pursue to manage innovation. Technological innovation will be examined through its process of exploring, executing, leveraging, and renewing from both the perspectives of entrepreneurs and regulators. Students will be guided to seek a collaborative governance mechanism that is workable for different players and sectors in innovation to achieve sustainable growth.

Sample Elective Course List

IPEN 5110

Foundation in Public Policy

3 Credit(s)

Description

The course will provide an advanced foundation in the study and practice of public policy at the level required for graduate study. The course will cover both the historic foundations of policy studies, as well as emerging approaches and directions. As the study of public policy is inherently interdisciplinary, it will include perspectives from political science, public policy, economics, business and other aspects of social science. It will take a broad view of public policy, including taking up some of the core literature on public management and public administration.

IPEN 5111

Public Management and Institutional Analysis

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course focuses on the theoretical and analytical perspective of public management and institutions. It introduces students to key concepts in the discipline of public management and institutional analysis. The course begins with a review of the evolution of thinking in this field. In the following sessions, students will be extensively exposed to theoretical frameworks. The course aims to equip students with theories that help students in building up their capacity toward academic research.

IPEN 5120

Research Design for Innovation, Policy and Entrepreneurship Studies

3 Credit(s)

Description

The purposes of the course are to introduce to students key concepts in research design, and to help them develop skills in the design of empirical research for conducting innovation, policy and entrepreneurship studies. Specific emphasis will be on the use of quasi-experimental designs in policy research, as well as on their potentials and limitations.

IPEN 5130

Economics of Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course introduces the economics of technology innovation and entrepreneurship through the combined perspectives of microeconomics and macroeconomics. It covers microeconomic core modules concerning consumers, firms, markets, and governments, as well as macroeconomic core modules on economic growth associated with entrepreneurship and innovation.

IPEN 5160

Big Data Applications for Business and Government

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course will cover the key concepts and technologies of big data and data analysis, with a focus on the application of big data in formulating business strategies and policies, and related research issues on how big data affects the direction of business and policy development. The course will provide students with practical training on big data and data analysis based on real-world business or policy issues, ranging from collecting and preprocessing to organizing and analyzing large-scale data.

IPEN 5200

Uncertainty, Information and Decision Making

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course introduces the economic theories of decision making under risk and uncertainty and how agents with heterogeneous information interact strategically. Sample topics include expected and non-expected utility theories, models of strategic communication, and information design. Students will apply the theoretical tools to understand and improve real world institutions, such as employee feedback systems and transparency in organizations.

IPEN 5250

Text Analysis and Machine Learning

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course serves as an applied introduction to machine learning methods for text analysis. Several approaches on text data management and analysis will be covered in this course including basic natural language processing techniques, document representation, text categorization and clustering, document summarization, sentiment analysis, social network and social media analysis, probabilistic topic models and text visualization.

IPEN 5260

Corporate Governance Research

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course is designed to introduce students to the key corporate governance phenomena examined in the field of strategic management. We will review how economic and organizational theories are applied to explain the choices and outcomes of governance design. In addition, we will also investigate some behavioral or process-related factors affecting the functioning of governance mechanisms, especially the board of directors.

IPEN 5270

Corporate ESG Practice and Research

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course focuses on the development of the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) movement and its relationship with other long-standing concepts such as corporate social responsibility and sustainability. It aims to review the content, antecedences, and consequences of corporate ESG practices and stimulate new research ideas in related areas.

IPEN 5280

Technological Catching-up Policies and Management

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course deals with various issues when late-comer firms and countries may encounter in the technological catching-up with the more advanced firms and countries. Technological stages and paths are studied and highlighted at the three different levels of country, sector and firms. Students will learn various theories regarding technological catching-up and have opportunities to apply them to real cases.

IPEN 5290

Public Problems and Policy Design

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course is designed to provide learning opportunities regarding how to analyze and structure messy unstructured public problems. This course consists of a series of different fake public problem cases to help students experience setting up, analyzing, and designing policies. Over the course of the term, students analyze the cases quantitatively and qualitatively, and then propose solutions with an integrated manner of the analysis results. Much of the work is done in small groups or individually.

IPEN 5300

Experimental Economics and Organizational Behavior

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course introduces the methodology of experimental economics and related behavioral theories, with an emphasis on social-psychological elements of preference and organizational design. Experiments studied will include ones based on the prisoners’ dilemma, dictator game, ultimatum game, and especially the public goods game and the trust game, along with more complex designs for studying institutional and organizational problems such as creation of centralized punishment schemes and secure property.

IPEN 5310

Behavioral Economics and Public Policy

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course introduces behavioral economics - the incorporation of insights from psychology into economics - with an emphasis on its value for improving empirical predictions and policy decisions. Students will learn the major themes of behavioral economics and apply them to improve the design, implementation, and evaluation of public policies in a wide variety of domains.

IPEN 5330

Energy Economics and Policy

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course provides an in-depth examination of the economics and policy issues surrounding energy. Topics include energy demand and supply, market structures, renewable energy technologies, fossil fuels, energy security, climate change, transportation, innovation, and policy analysis. Students will also participate in a research project to apply their knowledge to real-world scenarios.

IPEN 5340

Business Model Innovation for Sustainability

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course provides an overview of sustainable business model innovation theories and practices as well as discusses how business models can serve as essential tools to transform our economy into a sustainable one. We will provide students with a rich opportunity to examine companies’ efforts in creating and implementing sustainable business models and building a supporting ecosystem.

IPEN 5350

Energy Systems and Policy

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course explores the challenges associated with climate change, energy and environmental policies from multiple perspectives, disciplines and scales. Students will examine the evolving science and policy of climate change, observe the conflicts between energy companies and interest groups in China, discuss technology innovations and its impact on reducing greenhouse gases emission.

IPEN 5400

Climate Change: Science and Governance

3 Credit(s)

Description

This course prepares students to acquire the basic knowledge of climate change, which sits on the intersection of science and governance. It will review some of the scientific facts of climate change and contrast the scientific research findings with climate governance status. Case study on transforming to a low carbon society will be conducted in later part of the course. Aspects to consider include both scientific support and governance complexity of the low carbon city idea. Students are expected to build their own analysis of the climate change issue at the end of the course.

IPEN 5500

Science, Technology and Innovation Policy

3 Credit(s)

Description

The course introduces the conceptualizations of innovation policy and its instruments. It also develops evaluation methods to analyze the effects of these policy instruments and policy mixes. Cases of conceptual and empirical studies focus on the issues of innovation funding schemes and publicly funded science systems.

IPEN 5700

Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation

3 Credit(s)

Description

Technological innovation is increasingly the source of sustainable competitive advantage for firms worldwide. This course introduces a grounding in the field of technology and innovation, with an emphasis on economic policy and business strategy. The course will be highly interactive and apply multiple disciplines including economics, management, law and public policy.

IPEN 5800

New Venture Creation

3 Credit(s)

Description

This is an introductory course to entrepreneurship research. Entrepreneurship is defined as the creation and growth of business ventures, either as new organizations or inside existing ones, and as transformation of existing organizations. This course covers fundamental readings and current research with an emphasis on business venture creation. The objective is to give enough training that students can follow and contribute to entrepreneurship research.

IPEN 5810

Data Science in Empirical Economics

3 Credit(s)

Description

In the digital age, there is more data available than ever before on human behavior: from analyzing an elected official’s opinion on Twitter to identifying a farmer’s crop choices through satellite images. This course aims to familiarize students in applied economics, public policy, and relevant disciplines with recent research that has used big data to push the cutting-edge of the applied economic and public policy fields. Through a combination of problem sets and independent projects, students will acquire the statistical and computational tools needed for making use of big data in empirical research.

IPEN 5820

Environmental Economics and Sustainable Development

3 Credit(s)

Description

This is a graduate-level interdisciplinary course focusing on the economics of environmental and sustainable development problems and the solutions to those problems. Students will learn to use tools from applied economics and relevant disciplines to better understand and evaluate a series of current policy questions, such as air and water pollution, climate change, environmental amenities, agricultural production, ecosystem services, and biodiversity.

IPEN 5900

Policy and Technology for Carbon Neutrality

3 Credit(s)

Description

All industries in China are actively taking effective actions to develop new and clean technologies in order to achieve the carbon peak and neutrality goal of shouldering the common destiny of human beings. This course examines the scientific, technological, and policy approaches that China and the rest of the world can take to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality.

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