Why do economics students need to read?

   Having written the post "the danger of reading economics books", I would like to write another post to emphasize the importance of reading. I don't want students to be misled by the title of my post: there is a danger of reading books but it does not mean one should not read. 
   However, unlike some academic subjects (e.g. sociology, journalism, philosophy, etc), economics will not require extensive reading. In fact, the situation is similar to science subjects like physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc. The most essential way to master these science subjects is to learn their theories first, not reading the famous papers or books written by famous authors (physics students are never required to read Einstein's original papers). In a way, the reason why economics students are not required to read more is the same as why science students are not required to read more. Nevertheless, I do think that there is a reason why reading (not-for-exam materials) is still important for economics students.
   When I was an undergraduate student, wandering with the various mathematical models, I wondered if I had learned anything from economics. Now, I have taught economics for years, wandering with the various mathematical models, I wonder if I have taught any useful economics to students. (To get some feeling why math is important in economics, read one past post and another.) Yes, sometimes I am puzzled and I believe some of you may also share my feeling. In fact, upon reflection, it is very natural that people would have such a feeling when learning a technical subject like economics.
   To apply technical knowledge to real-world affairs is not that easy and straightforward. The real world is complicated with each event simultaneously affected by a myriad of factors. But we cannot analyze all the factors by our limited intellectual faculties. We have to identify several most important factors and concentrate only on these factors. A good analysis is that, even if few factors are identified, the event can be successfully analyzed (for another perspective of economic analysis, see my past post). However, no one can teach you in every particular case which factors are the most important ones. That is why doing applied economics is sometimes more difficult than learning theoretical economics.

   Classroom teaching of economics equips you with many analytical tools that may be useful in certain real-world cases. Without learning these tools, you have nothing to start with an analysis. But when you should use concept A instead of concept B in analyzing a phenomenon that you encounter cannot be learned in classrooms and textbooks. 
   If you really want to learn how to do applied analysis, there is still a method: read more and practice more. Obviously, as students, reading more about others’ applied analysis is of higher priority than practicing more yourselves. In fact, I believe that the most important reason why students cannot do applied economics right is that they have not read enough. Therefore, reading is important for learning economics (I have also recommended some books; see this, this, this and this post).
   Applied analysis written by economics is now not difficult to find as many economists write blogs. That's not true in the past. The materials were limited. Milton Friedman's and Paul A. Samuelson's newspaper columns were thus many students' only resorts. Now, we have much more choices. The difficulty becomes how to choose the suitable ones for reading. As mentioned in my past post, many writings in the name of economics are nothing but business writings. You have to read this past post for getting some ideas of how to choose. What I want to emphasize is: if you really want to turn the economics that you have learned into useful knowledge for your life, you have to read.