Research Process

During my research, I was surprised how little research currently exists on the topic of thermoeconomics and biophysical economics. It was extremely difficult to find sources relevant on the topic for two reasons: First, the topic is extremely narrow and thus there is very little written about it, and second, the terms “thermoeconomics” and “biophysical economics” can each refer to entirely different topics irrelevant to my research. As such, I am not entirely confident that I have fully explored the subject. Many of the sources I do find are relatively difficult to understand and require an extremely thorough understanding of both economics and physics, a lot of which is above my level of understanding, so I am limited to using only that which is simple enough to understand. One major section of my paper will be what are the limits of the analogy between physics and economics. However, I have yet to find any sources that describe the limit of this analogy, because finding sources that describe it is rare enough. I will then have to make these connections between these sources and Smith, Johnson, Lethem, and Stiglitz myself, but there is the danger of making unfounded assumptions without proper research to back it up.   At the same time, I do not want to have to juggle too many sources. I have a vague notion of the connections I want to make and how to combine the sources I have, but I am not sure if this will actually work as planned in practice.