Lifting barriers.Lifting lives.

We are building a human flourishing movement.

The Archbridge Institute

Our mission is to lift barriers to human flourishing. Through rigorous academic research, sound public policy solutions, and fostering a holistic vision of human flourishing, the Archbridge Institute works to empower individuals to achieve better, richer, and fuller lives by identifying and removing the barriers that constrain their potential and encouraging the aspirations and actions that cultivate their capabilities.

Human Flourishing

Human flourishing is about people striving to live better, richer, and fuller lives. Human flourishing is using one’s individual agency to take actions and pursue aspirations, betterment, and growth. It is fulfilling our unique potential.

Economics of Flourishing

Psychology of Flourishing

Culture of Flourishing

OUR PROJECTS

Testimonials

“Archbridge is a beacon of empirical truth in a world of false claims and distorted readings of the evidence. It’s a pleasure to work with them in getting the facts straight about the American economy.” 

James Heckman, 2000 Nobel laureate in economics

“I have been a strong supporter and personal contributor of the Archbridge Institute since its founding. I believe they are one of the most important new efforts in the liberty movement, and I have full confidence in Gonzalo Schwarz and the team he is building.”

Kris Mauren, Founder and President of the Acton Institute

“Archbridge is distinctive in combining a commitment to human dignity with a caring, pragmatic vision. As a black person, most organizations on the left compromise our dignity; on the right, caring is not always apparent. Archbridge provides a path forward.”

Magatte Wade, serial entrepreneur and CEO of Skin is Skin

Archbridge Institute has conducted indispensable research highlighting the deep connection between advancing human progress and cultivating a society that adopts the empowering mindset of Agency. For the rising generation, Agency is the antidote for a pessimism that too often short circuits the ambitions necessary to achieve the American Dream and lead a meaningful life. Thankfully Archbridge stands out as a premier institution reminding all of us of the building blocks that undergird human flourishing.”

Ian Rowe, Co-founder of Vertex Partnership Academies and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

“The Archbridge Institute’s Human Flourishing Lab has enormous potential to re-energize the culture nationally and globally. With meaning front and center, the Lab will help people everywhere confront their fears, pursue their goals, and create a better, more optimistic world.”

Arthur Brooks, Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School

“The team at Archbridge focuses on the too-often-ignored cornerstone of a prosperous society: Social Mobility. Time and again their research and articles accurately report on the signal where many others report on the noise in our increasingly divided society. Archbridge’s contribution to a constructive, academically rigorous and humanly respectful discourse makes them indispensable. I am proud to be on their board and excited for the excellent work this team will produce in the future.”

Andreas Widmer, Archbridge Institute board member, Director of the Arthur & Carlyse Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship, Catholic University of America

“The Archbridge Institute is doing marvelous work in reigniting the way forward for economic and social advancement via the genius of free markets and the American experiment in ordered liberty. Its careful research combined with Archbridge’s optimistic message of opportunity and upward mobility through a culture of enterprise, virtue, personal and family responsibility, and critical institutions like rule of law and limited government constitutionalism is precisely what we need at a time when many people believe these things are beyond us.”

Samuel Gregg, Archbridge Institute academic advisor, Friedrich Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History, American Institute for Economic Research

“Freedom advocates often make the mistake of explaining liberty’s benefits in overly abstract terms. Liberty, however, is not, and cannot be, an abstraction, for ‘[y]ou will recognize them by their fruits.’ For the common person, the fruits of freedom are, and must be, recognizable, apparent, tangible and attainable. This is where the battle must be won; in demonstrating that we cherish freedom not as an intellectual conception, but because it provides the average person the best chance to find their bliss. The Archbridge Institute corrects this error, by proffering clear and convincing evidence of freedom’s bounty for all.”

Mort Taylor, Archbridge Institute board member, CEO of Signal Power & Light

“I spent the last decade collecting data about human progress and giving talks on the improving state of the world. When presented with facts showing humanity’s progress over the last few hundred years, some people appear delighted. Others seem incredulous. I have even encountered people who seemed genuinely angered by what they saw and heard. As far as I can tell, the more ideologically committed people are to a set of apocalyptic beliefs, the less likely are they to accept the empirical evidence and change their outlook on the world. That’s where a statistician’s toil ends, and a psychologist’s work begins. Why do people believe ideas unsupported by facts? What utility do they derive from embracing doom and gloom? I can’t think of anyone better suited to answer those questions than Professor Routledge and his team.”

Marian Tupy, editor of HumanProgress.org and senior fellow at the Cato Institute

“The study of the causes and consequences of human flourishing often involves hotly debated ideological positions. The Archbridge Institute brings a much-needed empirical perspective to these issues, which promises both to advance our understanding of how human flourishing works and to throw some water on the ideological fires burning in our midst.”

Robert Lawson, Archbridge Institute academic advisor, Director of the Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom, Southern Methodist University

“In the present age, the public discourse is dominated by zero-sum thinking, whereby people with a lower quality of life believe that this is because someone else is enjoying a high quality of life. This creates a destructive fixation on redistributing existing wealth through state-sanctioned expropriation, rather than on the creation of new wealth. Whereas the research arena has traditionally been an open marketplace for ideas, it has recently been contaminated by this poisonous dogma, and scholars are gradually mutating into expendable pawns in a political battle. I am joining the Archbridge Institute to contribute to the reversal of these concerning trends. I see great value in research that dispassionately analyzes people’s ability to improve their lot in life, and that focuses on equipping societies with the resources and policies they need to create social mobility. Few things are as inspirational as seeing someone strive, work hard, and fulfill their potential.”

Omar Al-Ubaydli, Archbridge Institute academic advisor, senior affiliated scholar at the Mercatus Center, George Mason University