Our Mission
To advance human welfare by enabling policymakers to understand the complex consequences of their decisions before they make them.
The world faces unprecedented challenges. Climate change threatens ecosystems and economies. Inequality strains social cohesion. Technological change disrupts labor markets. Central banks navigate uncharted monetary territory.
These challenges demand policy responses. But policy is hard. Every intervention ripples through complex systems in ways that are difficult to anticipate. Well-intentioned policies can have unintended consequences. Debates rage for decades without resolution because we lack tools to evaluate competing claims.
We believe simulation can help. By modeling millions of heterogeneous agents interacting within carefully specified institutional environments, we can explore how policies might actually play out—not in the world of stylized models with representative agents, but in something closer to the messy reality of human behavior.
Our mission is to build these tools and put them in the hands of people who make decisions that affect millions of lives. We exist to illuminate tradeoffs, quantify uncertainty, and help society navigate toward better futures.
What we believe
Evidence over ideology
Policy debates are often dominated by priors and politics. We believe empirical evidence—including simulation evidence—should inform these debates. We follow the data wherever it leads.
Heterogeneity matters
Average effects hide distributional consequences. A policy that benefits most people may devastate others. Our simulations capture this heterogeneity, because understanding who wins and loses is essential to good policy.
Global perspective
Policy challenges don't respect borders. Climate change, trade, migration—these are inherently global issues. We study policies in their global context and collaborate with researchers worldwide.
Long-term thinking
Political incentives favor short-term fixes. But many of the most important policy questions involve tradeoffs between present and future. We model long time horizons and intergenerational effects.
How we create impact
Build tools
We develop open-source simulation frameworks that enable rigorous policy analysis at scale.
Conduct research
We apply these tools to pressing policy questions, publishing findings in peer-reviewed venues.
Engage policymakers
We work directly with governments, central banks, and international organizations to inform decisions.
Train researchers
We build capacity by training the next generation of computational social scientists.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful. Our goal is to make policy models more useful by making them more realistic—capturing the heterogeneity and complexity that simpler approaches miss."