Research Library

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.

GCC states have taken an active role in supporting entrepreneurship creation, as part of efforts to diversify and grow their economies. Yet while state-led entrepreneurship policies have worked to achieve many positive outcomes, they have also revealed some major shortcomings, such as reinforcing the political status quo and limiting the possibility of genuine change toward democratization. M. Evren Tok explores these issues in both a short issue brief and longer research paper on pluralism and inclusion in the Middle East after the Arab Spring. The project is generously supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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.

The rate of adults without health insurance across the U.S. dropped nearly twice as much as in Texas from 2013 to 2015, according to a new report released today by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation.

A larger percentage of Texas workers are getting health insurance through their employers now than before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, according to a new report released by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation.

Concerned about high medical bills, uninsured Texans are twice as likely as the insured to delay or forgo health care. That’s one of the findings of a new survey released today by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation.

Texas’ uninsured population remains primarily Hispanic, middle-aged, with low incomes and without a college degree, according to a report released July 30 by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation.

In Texas, Hispanics and women showed the largest reductions in rates of uninsured since enrollment began under the Affordable Care Act, according to a new report released June 2 by the Baker Institute for Public Policy and Episcopal Health Foundation.