1st Edition

Creative Research in Economics

By Arnold Wentzel Copyright 2017
    190 Pages 52 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    190 Pages 52 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    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).

    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).

    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.

    Chapter 1: The Possibility of Systematic Originality

    The state of scientific creativity in economics

    Can creative research be a systematic process?

    Going beyond existing creativity research

    Chapter 2: Originality in Social Science Research

    Defining originality

    Degrees of originality

    What the product of originality looks like

    The disciplinary origin of scientific originality

    From shared mental model to original contribution

    How the leap happens

    What will be regarded as conceptions?

    Requirements for a systematic approach

    Chapter 3: The Representation of Problems in Economics

    The importance of problems in science

    The importance of problem representation

    Economic problems represented as trade-offs

    Economic problems represented as conflicts

    Comparing representations

    How to construct an economic problem as a conflict

    Assumption identification

    Chapter 4: Originality Through Questions

    Generating interesting questions

    Questions of critical confrontation

    Questions in pursuit of new ideas

    Problematising questions

    Chapter 5: Reasoning to New Ideas

    Abductive reasoning

    Abduction, deduction and shared mental models

    Mathematical proof and creative reasoning

    Abduction with the aid of a logical conflict

    Abduction with the aid of questions

    Chapter 6: Rational Reconstruction from Case Studies

    Amartya Sen and the capability approach

    Kydland and Prescott and the ideas of central banking

    Ronald Coase and his Theorem

    Chapter 7: Dealing with Authentic Economic Problems

    The problem of authentic economic problem solving

    The social nature of economic problems

    The political nature of economic problems

    The unstructured nature of authentic economic problems

    Conventional ways of dealing with wicked problems

    A participative approach to original contributions

    Chapter 8: An Instructional Programme

    Guiding philosophy

    Instructional design

    Front-end analysis

    Goal, task analysis and objectives

    Learning activities

    Evaluation

    Some additional findings from the first pilot programmes

    Chapter 9: Next steps

    Direct uses of this research

    Obvious extensions

    Less obvious extensions

    Biography

    Arnold Wentzel is a lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, where he teaches economics, education and research writing across a range of disciplines.