One Year of Econ Nerds

Today marks one year of making Econ Nerds.

Econ Nerds is a project of MRU. MRU, if you aren’t familiar, is a nonprofit focused on economics education founded by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok. Over the years, we built out our offerings: full Micro and Macro courses, interactive practice activities, and a high school curriculum. In 2025, we hit our market-share adoption goals and started deciding what to do next. We settled on Econ Nerds. We wanted to build a space where we could make fun economics videos and encourage others to do the same.

Our initial vision was one video a week and a podcast featuring many different contributors. I’d serve as a test case and regular contributor, and other professors and grad students would hop on board to make videos. One year later, here’s what we’ve learned:

Lesson 1: It is hard to get people to make Econ videos

We thought we’d be able to get presenters other than me, but professors and researchers didn’t seem very interested in making videos. Shoutout to Ariel and Jadrian, who were the only two others willing to make the plunge into video creation.

How we pivoted: I now interview researchers and showcase their work. Rebecca Lowe appears in the Space video, and I’ve interviewed Arnold Kling and Bryan Caplan for upcoming videos. I’ve also lined up interviews with researchers for 4 of the 7 videos currently in production.

Lesson 2: It is hard to get people to watch Econ videos

Our view counts are low, and much lower than those of similar channels.

Pivot: In October, we realized we had a huge problem: not only were our views low, they were declining. Since then, I’ve watched a ton of videos on what I call “YouTubeMAXXING.” Now we spend a lot of time on titles, thumbnails, and the first minute of each video. There is a mantra that is true: If no one clicks, no one watches. Since then our numbers have improved slightly and <<fingers crossed>> seem to moving in the right direction. We’ve had a couple videos break the 10K mark and our like and comment ratio are huge. Usually 10 percent of the people who watch click the like button which is huge, plus we get very engaged comments. So we are trending in the right direction and attracting the people we want: curious and intelligent.

Lesson 3: Quality seems to matter more than quantity

We thought consistency was extremely important for the YouTube algorithm, but later research suggested it wasn’t all that important.

The pivot: We now spend more time on scripting and production to make each video better, and we aim for about two videos a month. That means one video every two weeks, with four weeks of vacation a year for me. This is far more manageable for me, and I generally try to either write a script or shoot/edit one each week. So in any given week, I’m either focused on writing or producing.

Lesson 4: What people want to watch is depressing

Our most popular videos either have partisan appeal or appeal to a victim mindset. On social media, people want their priors confirmed or want to be told that someone else is responsible for their problems.

Pivot: No pivot here. We make interesting economics videos, and we don’t want to be part of the problem. To the extent that we confirm a prior or play into a victim mindset, it will be because the research led us there.

Lesson 5: We can make really entertaining, Econ-grounded videos

The small number of people who watch our videos seem to really enjoy them, and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback via email and in person.

Pivot: We’re leaning further into higher quality and more activity. I’m trying to get out of my office and shoot around town as much as possible, while also doing more interviews.

Lesson 6: We could not make a high-quality podcast

We couldn’t quite make a podcast we were proud of. We came close, but ultimately decided to focus on video-making instead.

Pivot: We ended the podcast, although we’re definitely open to restarting it.

We are confident in what we are making, and personally I’ve never had more fun. So we will keep making videos despite the low views.

Here is a preview from our most ambitious video yet, coming in a few weeks: