These are the voyages of a graduate student. Their 5 year mission? To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no researcher has gone before.
From the inbox:
I am an economics phd student at [top school]. I regularly read your environmental economics blog and enjoy what you guys cover and discuss. I am just getting started in environmental economics research and I figure that I would ask you a few questions about how to find the "research frontier" in the field. So far I have a big interest in fisheries management .... I have not completed any formal research projects on fisheries but I hope to in the future. Some of my other interests are the economics of global warming, valuation methods, various issues in ecological economics, and energy economics. As for my questions: Where can I go online to discover the most up-to-date research in environmental economics as a whole and within the fields that interest me?
My reply:
What you might do is pick up the latest issue of JEEM, Land Econ, Env and Res Econ, Res and Energy Econ and Marine Resource Econ (since you are interested in fisheries) and read the latest article on your favorite topic. All of these are available online, especially if you are searching for papers on campus. Since you are just starting out, you won't be able to understand much of what is in the papers, but skim those parts. Pay close attention to the references and read those papers that seem especially relevant. At some point you'll get a feel for a research frontier and be totally discouraged because you don't see how you can contribute to it. No fear, that is the purpose of grad school.
