Michael König

Michael König is an Associate Professor in the School of Business and Economics at VU University Amsterdam. He previously held research positions at the University of Zurich, Stanford University, and ETH Zurich.

Dr. König’s research interests include social and economic networks, innovation, research & development, diffusion, key players, and conflict. Specifically, he has been studying the economics of innovation and technical change, and how they affect and are affected by networked relationships between various economic actors, including individuals, firms, sectors, and countries. His research combines both theoretical as well as empirical methods, and he uses these methods to evaluate real world policy instruments. He aims to contribute to a full development of network theory and its applications to innovation economics, industrial organization and other areas, by combining theoretical models with real world applications.

His most recent research projects range from the study of technological change, innovation diffusion, the decision to adopt new technologies and economic growth, to political stability and financial risk. His research has appeared in the Review of Economics and Statistics, Econometrica, Theoretical Economics, Journal of Behavior and Organization, Games and Economic Behavior, Physical Review E, Advances in Complex Systems, and Networks and Heterogeneous Media.

He holds a Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, a master’s degree in theoretical physics from the Technical University of Vienna and a diploma in applied statistics from the Seminar for Statistics at ETH Zurich.