Far from being a dismal science, economics is emerging as an exciting science. However, certain things come in the way of this growth of economics. It has become too insular. Majority of economics prize winners have spent half their career at just eight universities — Harvard, Yale, Princton, Stanford, MIT, University of Chicago, Columbia and Berkley. In other fields, talent is wide-spread, but in economics it has a high level of concentration.

Economic research justifies the laws of demand and supply. There are subtle innovations. Radical ideas are rare. It explains the geographical concentration. In other fields, a pathbreaking research, say of mRNA vaccine technology may not earn the researcher a professorship at the top university. Some pathbreaking research work say in antiobesity drugs has been done in Denmark, far away from the US research labs.

In economics, there are standard toolkits for economic issues, say inflation, recession, fiscal policy, deregulation etc. Economics just argue about the right mix of these policies from the toolkit. There are no novel solutions, no new drug to be discovered.

However, economics does not become less scientific in the absence of this novelty. Brazil controlled hyperinflation using economic policy three decades back. Some time-tested remedies could be tried even in contemporary scene. Many nations have achieved fiscal consolidation using standard economic advice.

In microeconomics too, there are many remedies.

Of course, breakthroughs in economics are rare, but the economists have built a protocol of solutions to the real-world problems.