-make a list of 10+ concepts from your economics class
-make a list of 10+ topics/questions you find interesting or important (ideally ones you already know you can find data on, like what Shakeel posted or topics from Our World in Data)
-start mixing and matching from the two lists to see if you can find some interesting essay topics (behavioural economics and road safety? cost curves and tobacco policy?)
Another option for generating ideas, depending on your mark scheme:
-find an interesting and important scholarly article
-what’s one unstated assumption the author made, or something they forgot to think about?
-write an updated version of their paper (potentially including running some updated analysis on their data!) to account for whatever they missed out when they published their paper
One option for generating new ideas:
-make a list of 10+ concepts from your economics class
-make a list of 10+ topics/questions you find interesting or important (ideally ones you already know you can find data on, like what Shakeel posted or topics from Our World in Data)
-start mixing and matching from the two lists to see if you can find some interesting essay topics (behavioural economics and road safety? cost curves and tobacco policy?)
Another option for generating ideas, depending on your mark scheme:
-find an interesting and important scholarly article
-what’s one unstated assumption the author made, or something they forgot to think about?
-write an updated version of their paper (potentially including running some updated analysis on their data!) to account for whatever they missed out when they published their paper
This is so helpful for coming up with a research question, thank you so much! The list methods works so well for me.