Research Library

Will the U.S. ban future LNG sales to China? Fellows Gabriel Collins and Steven R. Miles examine a recent move by the Department of Energy to “temporarily pause” LNG exports to countries that do not have free trade agreements with the U.S. — including China.

It may pay to shop around for health care. New legislation requiring transparency in health insurance coverage allows price comparisons between hospitals, across hospital systems, and with different insurers. In a new issue brief, Vivian Ho and co-author Evelyn Li compare quality and analyze pricing data from Houston area hospitals.

A comparison of the prices at three major Houston hospitals — Houston Methodist, St. Luke’s Health and Memorial Hermann — associated with Blue Cross Blue Shield and UnitedHealthcare PPO health plans finds wide-ranging costs for services.

In the wake of the collapse of Terra — a once-prosperous blockchain network that suffered one of the biggest falls in the history of cryptocurrency — the authors discuss recent government efforts to regulate digital assets.

The war in Ukraine could severely disrupt exports of Russian gas to Europe. Energy fellows Steven Miles and Gabriel Collins explain how existing LNG floating storage vessels can provide a concrete, rapidly implementable gas supply solution until longer-term infrastructure investments are in place.

This issue brief presents the results of a dynamic model similar in nature to the macroeconomic models used by the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation in evaluating the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The model shows a modest decline in wealth inequality due to the corporate tax cuts in the TCJA.

Rising health care costs and generational attitudes toward convenience and the ability to personalize life choices are driving a trend toward greater individual responsibility over the use of health care services.

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.

The landscape is changing for foreign direct investment in Latin America. Investments flow not only from north to south, but also from south to south and south to north. What's more, relatively small firms in developing countries are becoming as likely as multinationals to invest abroad.