The National Science Foundation solicited the views of a number of leading (?) economists on what the grand challenges of economic science are for the next decade. Some of the responses are available here–you may not understand much of what these white papers are about without serious background in economics, but I still encourage you to take a look and see where the hottest stuff in economics might be when you are in grad school, if you choose that route. After a quick glance, it does seem to me that many of these white papers are about the authors advancing their agendas rather than visionary perspectives that live up to the “grand” in the challenge. These are certainly no Hilbert’s ten problems for economics. Another thing that occurred to me: of the fifty or so authors of these white papers, only three or four are women. Therein lies another grand challenge for economics, I think.
[HT to Noam Nisan at the Algorithmic Game Theory Blog]