Creative Research in Economics

<p>Researchers are expected to produce original findings, yet nobody explains how original contributions are conceived in economics. Recently there have been calls for more creativity in economic research, yet there is no literature that explores creative research apart from collections of biographical essays. This book aims to address that gap, exploring the process of conceiving and generating ideas for interesting and original research contributions in economics (and potentially other social sciences too).</p><p>Creative Research in Economics serves both a practical and theoretical purpose. Theoretically it presents a unique way of thinking about the nature of problems and questions in economics and the role of social science researchers in society. As such it offers an interesting way to think about the philosophy of science and methodology in economics, and how new ideas emerge in the discipline. Practically it develops techniques for finding interesting and original research contributions (as opposed to conventional data-gathering research).</p><p>Whether you are a graduate student looking for that first interesting question, a novice researcher in search of fresh avenues for research after your PhD, or a seasoned academic looking to teach the philosophy and methodology of economics in more interesting ways, you will find this book of great use.</p> <p>Chapter 1: The Possibility of Systematic Originality </p><p>The state of scientific creativity in economics</p><p>Can creative research be a systematic process?</p><p>Going beyond existing creativity research</p><p>Chapter 2: Originality in Social Science Research </p><p>Defining originality</p><p>Degrees of originality</p><p>What the product of originality looks like</p><p>The disciplinary origin of scientific originality</p><p>From shared mental model to original contribution</p><p>How the leap happens</p><p>What will be regarded as conceptions?</p><p>Requirements for a systematic approach</p><p>Chapter 3: The Representation of Problems in Economics</p><p>The importance of problems in science</p><p>The importance of problem representation</p><p>Economic problems represented as trade-offs</p><p>Economic problems represented as conflicts</p><p>Comparing representations</p><p>How to construct an economic problem as a conflict</p><p>Assumption identification</p><p>Chapter 4: Originality Through Questions </p><p>Generating interesting questions</p><p>Questions of critical confrontation</p><p>Questions in pursuit of new ideas</p><p>Problematising questions</p><p>Chapter 5: Reasoning to New Ideas </p><p>Abductive reasoning</p><p>Abduction, deduction and shared mental models</p><p>Mathematical proof and creative reasoning</p><p>Abduction with the aid of a logical conflict</p><p>Abduction with the aid of questions</p><p>Chapter 6: Rational Reconstruction from Case Studies </p><p>Amartya Sen and the capability approach</p><p>Kydland and Prescott and the ideas of central banking</p><p>Ronald Coase and his Theorem</p><p>Chapter 7: Dealing with Authentic Economic Problems </p><p>The problem of authentic economic problem solving</p><p>The social nature of economic problems</p><p>The political nature of economic problems</p><p>The unstructured nature of authentic economic problems</p><p>Conventional ways of dealing with wicked problems</p><p>A participative approach to original contributions</p><p>Chapter 8: An Instructional Programme </p><p>Guiding philosophy</p><p>Instructional design</p><p>Front-end analysis</p><p>Goal, task analysis and objectives</p><p>Learning activities</p><p>Evaluation</p><p>Some additional findings from the first pilot programmes</p><p>Chapter 9: Next steps </p><p>Direct uses of this research</p><p>Obvious extensions </p><p>Less obvious extensions</p>