Measuring the costs of corruption around the world is challenging due to varying definitions of corruption, the invisibility of many corrupt acts, and the subjectivity of perceptions. In this research paper, postdoctoral research fellow Jose I. Rodriguez-Sanchez explores the difficulties of measuring corruption in Mexico.

Public finance fellow John Diamond and Rice faculty scholar George Zodrow analyze the short- and long-term economic effects of a federal carbon tax in the United States.

A numerical simulation of the macroeconomic effects of the House Republican Tax Reform plan, using the Diamond-Zodrow model, suggests that its net macroeconomic effects would be positive.

NAFTA has neither been the enormous success that its supporters believe, nor the disaster that its detractors claim. Renegotiating NAFTA — or even threatening to repeal it — is not a high-stakes proposition. The treaty simply does not possess the leverage to deliver a major boost or setback to the U.S. manufacturing sector. 

The cumulative impacts of U.S. liquefied natural gas exports is the subject of a new Department of Energy-sponsored study co-authored by Ken Medlock, senior director of the Center for Energy Studies. The study is one of two commissioned by the DOE "to inform [the department's] decisions on applications seeking authorization to export LNG from the lower-48 states to non-free trade agreement countries."

The United States should assign a particularly high priority on science and technology over the next four years, especially for federal support of research.

An analysis of the Romney Tax Plan and base-broadening, rate-reducing reform.

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I. Introduction

Even a cursory glance across the…