INET is all about thinking new things, and indeed academia is supposed to inspire great thoughts. So why are there so little original research in economics? I don't mean in total, but think of it as a percentage of the total output. The truly great research is pretty thin on the ground if you think of it that way, and in fact, even the mildly interesting is pretty thin. All this introspection was brought on by reading Richard Hammings talk "You and your research" (given some 25 years ago) - where he asks us to do Great research. 'Us' are the social scientists, scientists or all researchers out there. It is not clear to me that we economists follow his advice at many stages of our careers.
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