UK Economy
1. Energy prices and economy
2. Policy rules for economic stability and growth
3. Reform in public policy: tax, spending, trade, regulations, redistribution
4. Can tax cuts finance budget deficit? (endogenous growth model)
5. Productivity growth in manufacturing and services sectors
6. Human capital, research and development and economic growth
7. Reasons for decline in public sector investment over years
8. Role of public and private sector in funding of education and health sectors
9. Impact of volatility of exchange and interest rate on exports
10. Unemployment and inflation: in the long and the short run
11. Two speed economy: growth of income of skilled and unskilled workers
12. Provision for pension and social security
13. Impact in the economy of rising oil and energy prices
14. Liberalisation of the financial sector and private sector investment
15. Regulations of market for certain products (e.g. carpets, mobile phones, banana, cars,
cosmetics, drugs, cloths, furniture, nursing home, houses,)
16. Arguments for and against privatisation of semi-public goods (i.e. railways, airlines,
telecommunications)
17. Determinants of wage and earning by professions, skills and regions
18. Wage and income of sport clubs and top quality sport men and women
19. Factors contributing to variation in growth of regional and local economies
20. Equity and redistribution aspects of council tax, income tax or direct and indirect taxes
21. Can growth occur with redistribution
22. New deal and public and private sector partnership
23. Role of demand side and supply side policies in the economy
24. Patterns of consumption and saving by categories of households
25. Employment and output multipliers with Input-output model of the UK economy
26. Assessment of the reliability of macroeconomic forecasts
27. London Stock Exchange and global economy
28. Evaluation of economic costs and benefits of environmental levy
Economic Growth and Development Issues
29. Why the four-fifth of the World is still underdeveloped?
30. Why there is a North-South divide in per-capita income?
31. Story of productivity growth: impact of industrial to internet revolutions
32. Examination of poverty alleviation and economic growth
33. How much can human capital contribute towards economic growth?
34. Problems in transfer and adoption of technology
35. Why cannot all countries grow at the same rate?
36. What is the best technology to achieve higher rate of growth?
37. Balanced versus unbalanced growth
38. Does economic growth promote economic inequality?
39. Do higher environmental standards reduce the rate of growth?
40. Conflict, coalition and economic growth
41. Economic costs of conflicts and HIV in Africa
42. How much spending on research and development promote economic growth?
43. Infrastructure and economic growth.
Macroeconomic issues
44. Why are Keynesian models applicable more in some countries than in others?
45. Why the rates of unemployment are higher in rigid labour markets?
46. Examination economic problems when savings are not equal to investment
47. Should households save more to make economy grow faster?
48. Resource imbalances and economic crises
49. First, second and third theories of economic crises.
50. What are the best policy rules for stability and growth?
51. Trade-off between unemployment and inflation?
52. Can independent central banks do better than government controlled ones?
53. How can exchange rate instability be harmful for an economy?
54. Credibility of public policy and market reactions
Microeconomic issue
55. Determinants of consumption and saving.
56. Are consumers sovereign in market for goods and services?
57. Income and substitution effects of price changes
58. Analysis of short and long run cost of a certain firm or industry
59. Consequences of factor and product taxes in a competitive market.
60. Impacts of new technology in costs of production and supply.
61. Market imperfections, inefficiency and regulation
62. Is there any evidence for income and substitution effects in agriculture, manufacturing or
engineering sectors?
63. What are the welfare consequences of duopoly or oligopoly in the energy markets?
64. Does deregulation and privatisation bring efficiency in allocation of resources?
65. Analysis of expenditure pattern of households
66. How elasticities of supply and demand affect the burden to a consumer?
67. Examination of benefits and costs of privatisation
68. Application of utility maximisation hypothesis under uncertainty.
Trade issues
69. Examination of Tariff and non-tariff barriers of trade
70. Does global free trade reduce or increase income and wage inequality?
71. Does the direct foreign investment promote economic growth?
72. Who benefits and who loses from regional economic cooperation?
73. Assessment of impact of increase in oil prices in the global income
74. Enlargement of EU and Economic prospects of its new members
75. How can liberal trade reduce pressure of illegal immigration to rich countries?
76. Evaluation of achievements of the WTO and the Doha rounds of trade talk
77. Leontief paradox or factor price equalisation?
Public Policy issues
78. Should budget be balanced all the time?
79. Should government subsidise education or pay more unemployment benefit?
80. How can budget deficit create external and internal imbalances?
81. Can lower taxes reduce budget deficit?
82. Does the Ricardian equivalence apply in modern economies?
83. Examination of optimal tax rate and evidence
84. Optimal amount of public services?
85. Optimal allocation of public funds between local and central authorities
Households and labour market
86. Why current economic policies have created pension crisis in the West?
87. Income dynamics and life-cycle profiles of income
88. Determinants of wage and labour supply
89. Gender inequality in wage and earning
90. Link between educational qualification and earning
91. New technology, redundancy and structural transformation of labour market
92. Social safety net and unemployment: re-examination of Beveridge provisions.
Environment and natural resources
93. Economic impacts of Kyoto agreement
Keshab Bhattarai, Research Methods, HUBS 6
94. Consumption and production side externalities and social welfare
95. Double dividend hypothesis of environmental taxes
96. Do tight environmental regulations reduce economic growth?
97. Valuation and optimal use of non-renewable resources
Financial market and economy
98. Over or under investment, Value of a firm and the optimal stock of capital
99. Why banks tend to accumulate non-performing debt with weak monitoring?
100.Best way of financing economic development.
101.Analysis of risks and return in the financial market?
102.Volatility of financial markets and economy
103.Can Tobin tax (transaction cost) deter financial crisis?
Education economics
104.Impacts of universal primary education in skill formation
105.Who should pay tuitions: students or the government?
106.Matching education and job market
Country specific studies
107.Analysis of markets using microeconomic models
108.Model for macroeconomic policy evaluation and forecasting
109.Evaluation of impacts of tax reforms
110.Forecasting various policy scenarios
111.Movement in commodity prices and terms of trade
Commodity Markets:
112.agricultural goods: sugar, potato, cotton, rubber, green vegetables, tomato
113.fruit: apples, banana, pears, grapes, oranges, mango, jackfruit , coconut, nuts
114.grains: rice, corn, millet, wheat, maize, palm oil, peanuts
115.meat market: fish, beef, pork, lamb
116.drinks: wine, beer, whiskey, martini
117.metals and minerals: gold, silver, aluminium, steel, iron, copper, tin, zinc, oil
Uncertainty and asymmetric information
118.risks and uncertainty and markets for insurance
119.moral hazards and adverse selection
120.principle agent problem and monitoring
121.efficient contract and incentives
122.provisions for contingency
Energy sectors
123.Energy prices and trade in the global economy
124.Generation and distribution of electricity and pollution
125.Kyoto agreement on climate change
126.Trade-off between trade and environment
127.OPEC effect on oil and energy prices
128.Renewable energy and exhaustion of non-renewable energy
129.Fuel poverty
130.Role of energy sector in the growth of economy
131.Technological factors in promotion of the energy sector
Ref: Keshab Bhattarai, Research Methods, HUBS, p2-6, THE BUSINESS SCHOOL Research Methods For Economists
Deductive reasoning works from the more
general to the more specific. Sometimes this is informally called a "top-down"
approach. We might begin with thinking up a theory about our topic of interest. We
then narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that we can test. We narrow
down even further when we collect observations to address the hypotheses. This
ultimately leads us to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data -- a confirmation
(or not) of our original theories.
Inductive reasoning works the other way,
moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. Informally, we
sometimes call this a "bottom up" approach (please note that it's "bottom
up" and not "bottoms up" which is the kind of thing the
bartender says to customers when he's trying to close for the night!). In inductive
reasoning, we begin with specific observations and measures, begin to detect patterns and
regularities, formulate some tentative hypotheses that we can explore, and finally end up
developing some general conclusions or theories.