Research Library

Media stories have raised concerns about Florida’s expansion of advanced trauma centers, with newly designated centers charging high trauma activation fees for relatively minor injuries, and Texas has experienced similar expansion in the last decade. In a new working paper, Chair in Health Economics Vivian Ho and her co-authors study the association between trauma center upgrades and patient outcomes — examining Texas commercial claims to track changes in spending, mortality, and readmissions of trauma patients

This paper lays out one potential step-by-step path toward decarbonizing Saudi Arabia, imagining a sweeping restructuring of a fossil fuel-driven society and economy.

The authors conduct a step-by-step examination of various factors that were blamed for the extended power outage on the ERCOT electricity grid in February 2021. While no single factor fully explains the calamity, the bureaucratic failure in identifying and addressing risks along fuel supply chains was a major failure. Most proposed remedies do not fundamentally address what occurred. The authors make several recommendations, some of which have already been implemented.

The authors investigate the connection between the choice of transportation mode used by commuters and the probability of COVID-19 transmission.

Texas is the source of about one-quarter of all energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the US industrial sector and about one-eighth of all CO2 emissions from the US power generation sector, with a significant proportion of emissions in both sectors located near the gulf coast. As such, Texas has the opportunity to capture significant economies of scale in carbon capture.

Jim Krane, the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow for Energy Studies, argues that Saudi Aramco’s quest to remain the “last man standing” in global oil depends not just on its substantial cost advantages. Declining social acceptance of fossil fuel combustion suggests that Aramco’s pursuit of carbon competitiveness will assume growing importance.

A working group led by the Baker Institute has developed an innovative measurement-based standard — “BCarbon” — for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil as organic carbon. BCarbon is a scalable soil carbon storage standard designed to work for landowners and soil carbon storage buyers. The proposed standard allows landowners to monetize soil carbon storage as a property right.

The authors identify bottlenecks in the oil the oil and gas value chain that physically cause upstream flaring at the well; analyze the economic reasons for flaring, market distortions that could exacerbate it, and the cost to society of flaring, then lay out an agenda for researchers and policymakers.

The authors explore the history of the resource curse and provide summarize the working paper series titled “The Role of Foreign Direct Investment in Resource-Rich Regions.”

The authors evaluate Argentina’s energy sector and test the hypothesis that investments in tight oil and shale gas extraction expose investors to fewer risks than extracting conventional oil and gas. This working paper is part of a series titled “The Role of Foreign Direct Investment in Resource-Rich Regions.”