Course Content
Part A: Introduction to Economics
Basic economic concepts, Model and consumer and producer behavior,
Supply and Demand Curves, Market Forms: Perfect Competition, Monopoly, Oligopoly. Indifference curves, income constraint, elasticities, production functions, scale returns, profit maximization, Complementary and substitute products. Applications and examples from the field of information technology and telecommunications. Introduction to game theory.
Part B: ICT investments assessment
Overview of the ICT market. Technoeconomic analysis – basic principles and stages. Business plans: main principles, stages for the construction of successful business plans. SWOT – PEST analyses. Demand forecasting of products and services in markets – market competition. Forecasting methodologies, time series, aggregate models. Basic indices for investment assessment: Net Present Value - NPV, Internal rate of return - IRR, Project Payback Period, Investments, Operating Costs, Cash Flow, Income, Depreciation, etc. Risk analysis. Costing - Pricing of products and services
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of the course, students will know:
The basic concepts of microeconomics with reference to the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) market.
The concepts of supply and demand functions, market equilibrium, elasticities, income constraint,
The forms of the market (monopoly, oligopoly, competition)
In addition, they will be familiarized with the development of a systematic methodology for the valuation of an investment and techno-economic analysis in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). In this context, the basic principles and stages of a techno-economic analysis and the most important components of a techno-economic study will be presented, such as cost estimation, market, competition, risk, etc. They will also learn the basic principles of preparing business plans in the high-tech market, the most important methodologies for forecasting demand and competition, and the methodologies applied for costing and pricing products and services.
