Economist Justin Wolfers launches media company amid creator boom

Justin Wolfers has turned a familiar television presence into a new media business, betting that an economist with a sharp explain-and-translate style can reach the public without waiting for a cable booker to call.

Wolfers, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan and a visiting professor of economics at the University of Sydney, has spent years building a profile well beyond campus. The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy says he appears frequently on TV, radio and in print, and he is also a contributing columnist for The New York Times. His distinctive Aussie accent and fast, crisp breakdowns of President Trump’s trade moves have made him a recurring face on cable news, while his podcast with fellow economist Betsey Stevenson, Think Like an Economist, has helped extend that audience onto audio and social platforms.

The move arrives as the creator economy moves deeper into the mainstream. Goldman Sachs has projected that the broader creator economy could grow to $480 billion by 2027 from about $250 billion in an earlier estimate. The Interactive Advertising Bureau said U.S. creator economy ad spend is projected to reach $37 billion in 2025, a 26% increase from a year earlier and roughly four times faster than overall media-industry growth. For academics and policy voices, that growth changes the economics of public influence: a direct relationship with viewers can be more durable, more scalable and less dependent on legacy media gatekeepers.

It also changes the incentives. The old model rewarded experts who could fit into a TV segment and survive the segment’s time limits. The new one rewards those who can package analysis into podcasts, short video and recurring digital formats, where audiences can follow a voice rather than a program. Wolfers has already been doing that work through cable hits, his podcast and YouTube and TikTok clips that turn macroeconomics and trade policy into quick, shareable explanations. What is gained is reach and speed. What can be lost is the editorial filtering that once forced ideas through producers, anchors and the constraints of broadcast television.

Wolfers’ own academic work spans labor economics, macroeconomics, political economy, law and economics, social policy and behavioral economics. He earned his undergraduate economics degree at the University of Sydney in 1994, a detail that now sits neatly alongside a career that has moved from academic research to mass-market commentary. As economists and policy analysts increasingly build direct-to-audience brands, Wolfers is stepping into a market that is still expanding, still monetizing and still reshaping who gets to explain the economy to everyone else.