Year/Semester	Spring Semester
Type of Course	Elective
Credits	3
Aims and Objectives	The goal of this course is to enhance the students’ comprehension of concepts and analytical frameworks about innovation, guide them to those progresses contributed by frontier scholars in historical study, theoretical development and empirical research, and confront them with puzzles and questions still under controversy among researchers. By focusing on the discussion of developing issues as a major part of this course, we also aim to improve the students’ academic capability, especially of analyzing the difficulties and strategies in developing or undeveloped countries. If such a purpose is achieved, it definitely can develop into an effective aid to the students’ independent research in relevant fields. Lecturing and class discussion are the two major methods of teaching we adopt for this course. To be specific, we spend 75% time on lecturing and 25% on discussion.
Course Contents	To catch up with advanced countries in industrialization is one of the top-priority tasks for developing or undeveloped countries. Though there are controversies about patterns of catching up, the importance of innovation and technological progress has been generally recognized. However, how technological progresses happen and what kinds of institutional arrangements enable sustainable and fast progress remain highlighted questions among researchers and policy-makers. For students from developing or undeveloped countries, understanding the relevant micro mechanisms of technological progress and comprehending the historical experiences of industrialized economies is a key to their study of today’s developmental problems and tasks in their contexts. This course is organized by two sections: in the first one, discussion is focused on theoretical concepts, essential features and analytical frameworks of innovation, based on the experiences of industrialized economies; in the second section, we explore the theoretical discussion about catching up, and take East Asian countries as examples to investigate. The development of China will be stressed particularly. This course aims to establish the students’ understanding of fundamental concepts and analytical frameworks for innovation study, and the developmental experiences of industrialized and newly industrialized countries. Through this course, students are expected to construct their own research capabilities for today’s developmental questions in practical contexts.
Course Requirement	Since the lectures given by the convener are exactly associated with corresponding reading materials, students are obliged to complete their reading before every week’s class.
Textbook/Recommended Reading	There is no fixed textbook for this course. Rather we arrange reading materials, about 80 pages for every week. The appointed materials are deliberately selected from top-class journals or other well-known academic publications, and most of which are of classical literature and frontier researches in this field.
Course Evaluation	The evaluation of this course includes two parts, i.e. the usual performance and the essays. The usual performance accounts for 1/3 of the marks. Three aspects of students in this course are to be considered in the usual performance: (1) attendance, (2) completeness of appointed reading before the class, (3) activeness and performance in class discussion. The other 2/3 marks are for the quality of students’ essays. Students have two essays to write in this course. Each essay is evaluated by half of that 2/3 share. The first essay indeed is an on-class short written exam in mid-term. Students will be asked to answer several open questions. The second one is a final essay.
Language	English
Instructor	Feng Kaidong
Correspondence	k.feng@pku.edu.cn