Economics is the only social science that does not really relate in a sustained way with its origins. It just becomes like, yeah, I did a paper on that. So what's the question? You know, people have been saying for ages that economics is extremely self-referential. But what is interesting is self-Referential only within the current time.
Author and economist Branko Milanovic of CUNY talks about the big questions in economics with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Milanovic argues that the Nobel Prize Committee is missing an opportunity to encourage more ambitious work by awarding the prize to economists tackling questions like the rise of China's economy and other challenging but crucial areas of scholarship. In the conversation, he lays out what those questions might be and discusses what we know and don't know in these areas.