Great questions, and I guess I agree that generalist skills are probably more important (with one implication being that I’d be less excited about people getting PhDs in these fields than my comment might have implied).
Just as an example, since I’m quite new to the field as well: the project I’m currently working on includes a sub-question that I think an actual economist would be able to make much faster progress on: how does the availability of research talent to top technology firms affect their technological progress?
My impression is that since a lot of important research projects on e.g. ideas for new treaties, historical analogies, military-strategic options seem to similarly break down into sub-questions that vary on how domain-knowledge-demanding they are, social scientists might be able to have an unusual impact working on the more demanding of these sub-questions.
Great questions, and I guess I agree that generalist skills are probably more important (with one implication being that I’d be less excited about people getting PhDs in these fields than my comment might have implied).
Just as an example, since I’m quite new to the field as well: the project I’m currently working on includes a sub-question that I think an actual economist would be able to make much faster progress on: how does the availability of research talent to top technology firms affect their technological progress?
My impression is that since a lot of important research projects on e.g. ideas for new treaties, historical analogies, military-strategic options seem to similarly break down into sub-questions that vary on how domain-knowledge-demanding they are, social scientists might be able to have an unusual impact working on the more demanding of these sub-questions.