Writing in Boston Review, Harvard Professor Dani Rodrik and others talk about how public opinion has turned against the economics profession to some extent over the last decade or so, and how academic economists are trying to engage with the issues of the day, including inequality, technological change and climate change.

• economic history
• behavioral economics
• the study of culture (hmm, not sure if economists first thought of this one…)
• wealth concentration
• costs of climate change, and setting an appropriate carbon price
• “concentration of important markets” (maybe this means concentration of a few firms within a given market?)
• working class income stagnation
• social mobility
• empirical data analysis to test and confirm theory
• analysis and study of institutions
• appropriate allocation of property rights, including “intellectual property”
• innovation, technological change, and their effects on growth and labor markets
• money, power, and politics

They list a few “economic universals” which they think will never change: “market-based incentives, clear property rights, contract enforcement, macroeconomic stability, and prudential regulation”. Traditional topics that will probably always be studied include labor, credit, and insurance markets; tax, fiscal and monetary policy; international trade; recessions and financial crises; public goods and social insurance programs. I had to look up prudential regulation, which is basically capital requirements and limits on risk in the banking sector.