Altruistic Capital Lab
Economics for Human Flourishing
A future where everyone can contribute and thrive
We build a community of learning about what enables people to contribute and flourish, using the tools of economics, philosophy and psychology.
Humans have an innate desire to contribute. How we act on this desire shapes where we find meaning, the agency we feel and how we design our lives. Each time people contribute, they build the capacity to do so again, until it slowly becomes a habit. The workplaces, institutions and communities around us can allow this capacity to grow or wear it down. Where enough people contribute, an equilibrium can form. We study the capacities, policies and institutions that will build and sustain this equilibrium.
How we work
We co-generate knowledge with a growing community of partners: we ask the questions, run the research and interpret the results together.
We are not consultants. Partners do not pay for our research, and we publish the results whatever they show.
- Core partnersGovernments and firms where we build the evidence together, as living laboratories.
- Future partnersOrganisations joining us as the work grows.
- Community of learnersA widening circle of people who apply and extend the ideas in their own settings.
The Theory of Altruistic Capital
Our research
Forthcoming, American Economic Review: Insights
Ten Years of Relational Power
Adolescent girls in Lusaka were taught to negotiate for their own interests while keeping the relationship intact. Ten years on, they had stayed in school longer, married later and married closer in age.
Nurture not nature: how young women can learn to better wield economic power
The Guardian, August 2026
R&R at the Quarterly Journal of Economics
Meaning at Work
A multinational randomised the roll-out of its “Discover Your Purpose” workshop across 14 countries. Employees performed better, earned more and found more meaning, without cost to the firm.
How to inspire people
The Economist, December 2024
American Economic Review 110(5), May 2020
Losing Prosociality in the Quest for Talent? Sorting, Selection, and Productivity in the Delivery of Public Services
In a nationwide recruitment drive for a new health worker role in Zambia, advertising career benefits attracted more talented applicants without crowding out prosocial motivation.