Our economy forgets where its strength comes from.
We are building economic models that count what conventional accounting leaves out. Every balance sheet quietly depends on water, soil, a stable climate, and much more. So why aren't they included? Our first project prices the cost of rising heat in Cook County.
Antaeus was a giant who drew his strength from contact with the earth. He was undefeated until Hercules lifted him into the air and severed that connection.
It's a fitting metaphor for how modern economics treats the natural world. GDP, corporate earnings, and standard investment models are lifting economic growth off the ground it actually depends on. We are treating our natural resources as free, infinite, and irrelevant to the ledger. When we lose touch with the value of resources like water or temperate climates, we don't prosper, we just stop measuring the loss of where we could be.
Antaeus Research Group exists to put that connection back into the model.
Standard economics is missing the market.
Environmental harm is real, inaccurately priced, and paid for by everyone. That gap between activity and accounting is where our work is focused.
T - for Trillion. In Unpriced damage. Every year
Carbon, air pollution, water depletion, and biodiversity loss impose annual costs that never appear on a balance sheet or a national account.
Growth isn't the same as welfare
Genuine Progress Indicators (GPIs) have stayed roughly flat for decades in wealthy economies even as GDP doubled. That's because GDP counts activity, not whether people are actually better off.
Physics sets a floor and ENERGY is the foundation.
Modern economies need an energy return on investment above roughly 14:1 to function. Declining Energy Return on Investment (EROI) for fossil fuels is a structural, not cyclical, constraint on growth.
Rigorous models, built to make the invisible cost visible.
We're a small, working research group, not a think tank. Our team is building models, checking its assumptions, and writing it up. We're looking for strategic partners.
Get connected.
The real cost of rising heat in Cook County.
Five UChicago students, one shared thesis.
Alethea Oakley
Junior
Mateo Beauvineau
Sophomore
Gabriel Thomas
JuniorSam Straus
MPP StudentAarini Sheth
SophomoreInterested in the research — or want to help fund it?
We're looking for advisors, partner organizations, and early funding to take this from a Milestone 2 infrastructure buildout to a published model. And more to come.