The work I have done to date that can be classified as ‘strictly economics’ largely falls under the heading of applied microeconometrics – methods and empirical evidence. Examples are my work on income-based intergenerational mobility estimation and the importance of teacher quality for estimates of class size effects (this analysis was intended to demonstrate external validity concerns but also constitutes a contribution in itself). This kind of work is usually based on conceptual insights translated into theoretical results that are then tested empirically.
In a similar vein, I am currently working on a paper on brain drain/skilled migration (a much broader, philosophical analysis of which was published here) and a project on urban housing markets in South Africa. I also have two papers planned on a specific empirical question related to expert decision-making (one in sport, one in law).
I hope to extend earlier, critical work on external validity to respond to recent developments in the literature (such as the estimation of ‘marginal treatment effects’ and use of machine learning methods). As with the earlier work, I am pursuing methodological/philosophical work in parallel to this (see my INEM2019 and ENPOSS2019 presentations).
In addition to the above, I have a few draft papers relating to topics in theoretical microeconomics/choice theory; these require a suitably-skilled co-author to take further, so it remains to be seen when they will be published.