A young economist, or an economics journalist interested in what the young are working on, could do a lot worse than reading through, as I did the other day, 55 very short papers written by distinguished economists describing the large questions they think are likely to dominate the next generation of research in their respective fields.
They are among 252 papers by experts in various disciplines who responded to an invitation by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences to describe “grand challenge questions” that transcend near-term funding cycles, questions which therefore might benefit from investment in infrastructure.
From the response, this much is immediately apparent: interest in financial crises, medical systems engineering and, perhaps above all, new instrumentation share pride of place at the top of the list. A golden age of evidence-based economics lies ahead, thanks to the computer and the Internet.
To read more, I propose you this link from economicprincipals.com
