Research Library

Information and cyber action have been important but ancillary components of the Ukraine war since its outbreak on February 24, 2022. We offer a set of observations:

This brief estimates the costs of regulatory bank compliance under the Dodd-Frank Act, passed after the 2008 financial crisis to reduce risk-taking by banks.

Despite the period of very low interest rates since the 2008 financial crisis, bank lending has failed to recover. In this issue brief, public finance fellow Thomas L. Hogan explores the potential causes of this post-crisis decline in bank lending.

Lebanon faces significant developmental challenges, including insufficient electricity supply, environmental degradation and staggering inequality, yet the government has not invested in these areas despite substantial economic growth in recent decades. This student brief uses agenda-setting theory to argue that Lebanon’s disappointing record of development is reflected in the narrow political agenda of the government. This brief is part of a two-year project on pluralism and inclusion in the Middle East post-Arab Spring. The project is generously supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The PJD's pragmatic politics — intended to maintain the king’s support and appeal to heterogeneous constituencies — failed to protect the party from fragmentation and moves to weaken it.

This issue brief summarizes the debate over regulatory complexity, outlines a proposal from the Federal Reserve that would simplify bank capital regulations and another from the OCC that would push the financial regulatory system toward greater complexity, and recommends reforms to help improve financial stability.

In this issue brief, the authors examine the amount of growth and transactional venture capital (VC) in Houston, finding the the city lacks sufficient levels of growth VC needed to support its goals of establishing a high-growth, high technology startup ecosystem.

A study comparing the community benefit expenditures of two sets of Houston hospitals leads the authors to propose strategies that can better justify the tax exemptions the institutions enjoy.

While academic and popular debates tend to focus on differential benefits and costs of trade across countries or industries, this brief highlights winners and losers at the level of individual firms. The authors demonstrate that preferential liberalization produces concentrated benefits among a relatively small number of very large and productive firms.

This issue brief offers insights into the evolution and future of Mexico's Comprehensive Plan for the Southern Border to stem migration flows from Central America.