Note: This is post #86 in a weekly video series on basic economics.

As we’ve seen in recent entries in this series, ideas play a key role in economic advancement. If we can predict the future of ideas we can, in part, predict the future of economic growth. But how do we do that?

To answer that question, economist Alex Tabarrok look at the “Idea Equation.” In this video by Marginal Revolution University, Tabarrok explain how Ideas = Population x Incentives x Ideas/per hour.

(If you find the pace of the videos too slow, I’d mend watching them at 1.5 to 2 times the speed. You can adjust the speed at which the video plays by clicking on “Settings” (the gear symbol) and changing “Speed” from normal to 1.25, 1.5 or 2.)

Clickhereto see other videos in the Introduction to Economics series.