Nominal News – 2024 Recap
Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!
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Our goal for 2025 is to hit 3,000 subscribers:
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As 2024 is coming to a close, we wanted to do a short recap and thank all our readers for all the support. It has been a busy year for us, as it included our first ever electoral series. Let’s look at some specific numbers behind Nominal News and what are our goals in 2025.
Nominal News – By the Numbers
First, we have hit our goal of 1,000 subscribers by year end which we set ourselves last year. We are actually at 1,233 subscribers, growing our readership by 868, from 365 that we had last year. For this growth, we must thank our readers (every share, like and comment is highly appreciated) and our Substack Recommenders, who have helped grow our audience.
This year we wrote 28 articles, which is slightly more than one every two weeks. We’ve covered topics ranging from inflation, housing, the effect of heat on people’s behavior to the impacts of working from home, non-competes and third-places. Here’s our list of most read articles:
4,604 views – ‘Your pay is still – not – going up too fast’ (March 3, 2024) – why, contrary to the Economist piece on pay being too high, salaries and wages have not been growing fast enough to ‘drive’ inflation.
893 views – Revisiting Economic Data – 'Vibecession’ (November 27, 2024) – although economic indicators suggest the US economy is doing well, when we look at income after taxes and transfers, nearly everyone is worse-off since 2019, and especially since 2021.
887 views – Higher Education – Is It Worth It? (December 10, 2024) – recent research suggests that higher education increases skill and ability, and is not just a ‘signalling’ device.
822 views – Housing – Supply Side and Affordability (February 4, 2024) – how work from home and increasing public transit access can reduce house prices.
822 views – How We Misinterpret Electoral Polls (August 4, 2024) – electoral polls have been criticized for being wrong, but we are actually mis-interpreting them when making such judgements.
The top article was significantly more viewed than any of our other pieces. That is because it got significant readership on a website called Hacker News, where it stirred up a significant discussion.
If you’d like to read any of our previous articles – please check out our Categorized Archive.
The Substack Network
One of the main reasons for our growth has been the Substack Network. With the introduction Notes, it has become very easy to have meaningful discussions with other writers and readers, as well as discovering great new substack writers. Some of the most recent ones in Economics and Finance are:
Alpha in Academia – a newsletter by
focusing on academic research in finance, which distills the key findings of recent research papers. Some of the most interesting papers I learned about include how markets react to facial expressions of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and how age impacts an investor’s returns.- discusses economic research and analysis in the context of development and inequality. Thanks to this newsletter, I’ve learned about how micro-loans to women in Bangladesh reduced poverty and how improvements in financial markets helped the Philippines grow.
Unraveling Economics – a great economics newsletter that brings facts and research to today’s public debates. For example, our understanding of retail theft based on mass-media is very different from the actual data. Most recently,
tackles the US budget and the ‘artificial’ talk of efficiency.
Moreover, I continue to recommend the following great newsletters:
Monday Morning Economist – a newsletter by
that covers a broad set of economic topics in a very accessible way. Topics include the limited cost savings from government bureaucracy, the economic impact of Taylor Swift and how universities are competing on price.- presents very important data via maps to explain how inequality impacts the US. Along with economic insights, the American Inequality newsletter elucidates the distributive consequences of economic inequality in the US.
- presents actionable economic policy insights into how to resolve certain economic and social problems.
- discusses economic research on climate-related topics, as well as policy solutions that may help us adapt to climate change.
- undertakes deep dives into important historical events, as well as the effects these events have to this day. Keshler also interviews individuals related to these events which gives a personal perspective on the topic.
- synthesizes research and knowledge from a variety of fields to discuss how human progress and development continues to evolve, as well as how to foster human innovation.
There are many great substacks and the list above is just the tip of the iceberg.
Looking Forward
Nominal News is a 2-person team – a writer and an editor – that started in November 2022. We started Nominal News with the intent of bringing and sharing the tools and skills from an Economics PhD background and use them to discuss current economic issues. Currently, this is a publication we do in our free-time (one of the reasons why we have not enabled a paid feature), but we hope that as we continue to grow, we will be able to turn this into a full-time project!
Last year, we set our target to reach 1,000 subscribers. For this 2025 year, we’re going to set ourselves a target of 3,000 subscribers. I think this will be a tough goal to achieve. Your support is crucial to help us with this goal and the longer goal of making this a full-time project, which is why if you do find our writing interesting, please consider liking and sharing our work.
We are also always open to any feedback and suggestions about Nominal News – especially around my writing, clarity of thought, length of articles, and if there is anything additional we could do that would be helpful. Please leave a comment, send an email or message me via the Chat feature in Substack.
Thank You!
Lastly, Nominal News would not be possible without you! So we would like to take this opportunity to thank all our subscribers and followers, as you are the reason we keep working and writing new articles. We hope that you find our articles useful and interesting and we are always interested in making them better for you!
Thank you for being a valued reader of Nominal News and a Happy New Year!
💯agree —Jeremy Ney’s American Inequality is a must read! 📈📉📊👩🏻💻🗺️ We are grateful for his support for K16 Edu !!
Thanks for including me in this!