Becoming a Researcher

A great post on becoming a researcher. Well, it's actually titled: "How to find problems to work on", which is something I have found sometimes puzzles non-academics. I don't have 55 things I am working on but I do have a list with about twenty things on it which are papers from very sketchy ideas to papers under review. Probably, a smaller number of things makes sense in economics than in paleontology. Most economists publish less papers. How many things are in your list?