A hot topic, given the crisis associated with the financialization of the global economy, is "How did we get here?" Financial history is not only becoming a popular subject for books and articles, it is a great mine of past data within which a diligent researcher and synthesist can elaborate new principles that characterize substantial conclusions for Ph.D dissertations.
With the recent evolution of information technology, there is an enhanced ability to merge maps with databases. Data-mapping can literally show, using maps, differences in population density, demographics, resources, capital, human mobility, material flows and a host of other phenomena that beg for interpretation. Economic geography is a vast new territory to be explored by the Ph.D candidate.
Sociological and anthropological economics have great potential for the future Doctor of Economics. Concepts like Karl Polanyi's "embeddedness" have stated a relation between economics and kinship that has not yet been thoroughly documented. Likewise, Swedish anthropologist Alf Hornborg has supported general claims about the relation between profit and thermodynamic flows, synthesizing economics, anthropology and physical science. Few researchers have yet to apply his ideas with more specificity.
Micro-economic sector analysis changes as quickly as the sectors themselves, ensuring a steady supply of original research. The financial sector has received a great deal of scrutiny lately, but there are also changes occurring in energy, agriculture, transportation and other sectors. In the United States, there is an extremely complex and powerful relationship between the economy in general and the military sector that has yet to be explored in any depth.
The archaic term for economics was "political economy," and this association between politics, policy and economics is also changing rapidly with the political shake-ups around the world. New developments in policy, international relations and economic flows means there are new topics to be studied, analyzed and documented by the intrepid Ph.D candidate.