Our Common Future: Social Capital and the Well-Being Benefits of Economic Growth

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• Date: 12 October 2026
• Time: 4:00 – 5:00PM (Malaysia Time – GMT+8)
• Mode: Online (Microsoft Teams)
• Registration Link: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/fnxzHAWqTh

Economic policy is still judged largely by the growth rate, on the assumption that rising output eventually translates into better lives. The evidence suggests that this translation is far from automatic, and that it depends heavily on what growth preserves or erodes along the way.

Francesco Sarracino, senior economist and deputy director of the Research Department at STATEC, Luxembourg's National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Wellbeing Economics, will argue that economic growth benefits subjective well-being when it preserves public goods such as social capital. He will present updated evidence that social capital can at once improve well-being, reduce defensive and status-oriented consumption, strengthen cooperation on collective challenges, and support environmental sustainability. The session introduces new evidence on defensive consumption and a new measure of performance, well-being productivity, alongside examples of policies designed to promote well-being directly. The central implication is that public policy should place well-being at the centre of decision making, rather than maximising growth and relying on its benefits to trickle down.

Participants will leave with a clearer view of how growth, social capital and well-being interact, a working understanding of well-being productivity as a measure of performance, and concrete examples of policy that targets well-being directly.

The session will be beneficial to policymakers, public officials and researchers working on development, sustainability and well-being. It will also interest business leaders and civil society practitioners, as the argument bears on how performance is measured and on the trust and cooperation that collective action depends on.

About the Speaker

Francesco Sarracino is a senior economist at STATEC, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies of Luxembourg, where he leads the Research Unit on Well-being and Entrepreneurship and serves as Deputy Director of the Research Department. He is an invited professor at the University of Strasbourg and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Wellbeing Economics. His work focuses on evidence-based policies that promote socially and environmentally sustainable development and enhance people's well-being. He is a member of the World Wellbeing Panel and of the board of directors of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies, and has contributed to expert groups on quality-of-life measurement for the United Nations, the OECD and the European Commission. His research has appeared in Nature Human Behaviour, World Development, Ecological Economics and the Journal of Happiness Studies, among others. He holds a PhD in development economics from the University of Firenze.

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The Sunway Institute for Global Strategy and Competitiveness conducts fundamental and translational research on how governments, industries and communities compete and develop, redefining competitiveness to treat social and environmental conditions as explicit factors rather than externalities.

Its work centers around Return-on-Values (ROV), which is value created across four pillars: economic, social, environmental, and the political empowerment of communities. The Institute develops frameworks intended for use by policymakers, businesses and practitioners, with the aim of making regenerative competitiveness practical.

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