Experts in the News

If a major hurricane struck the Houston Ship Channel, the chemical soup left behind would cast a pall over southeast Texas for decades to come, said Rice faculty scholar Jim Blackburn. “You could say goodbye to economic development, to entire communities, and to one of the most prolific estuaries in the United States."

The rules in place that should, in theory, motivate oil companies to flare less do not have any teeth, said nonresident scholar Mark Agerton. So regulators, he said, should look into “denying companies a permit if they don’t meet particular standards or putting a tax or fee on flaring that says, ‘you can flare, but for a price.’”

Fellow Jim Blackburn and the Baker Institute are leading a group that is brainstorming ways to create a market for storing carbon in the soil of prairies, farms, ranches and grasslands in Texas and around the country. Grasslands store most of their carbon underground, in their roots and the soil. "It’s a good locker to put the carbon into,” said Blackburn.

“The root cause of the issue ... is that the existing tax system is outdated, whereas the digital economy is new. Many state and local governments are trying to fit new products and services into an old tax system,” said fellow Joyce Beebe of lawsuits asserting Netflix and Hulu should pay franchise taxes for their use of existing public infrastructure.

In an article for Law360, public finance fellow Joyce Beebe explored several factors that may point to a potential slowdown of the European Commission's state aid probe of member states' tax conduct.