Research Library

The authors analyze the carbon emission, energy market and economic implications of carbon tax proposal introduced by U.S. Rep. Carlos Corbels (R-Florida). The working paper was released as part of a collaboration between Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, the Rhodium Group and the Baker Institute.

Since the progressivity of the sales tax is difficult to directly measure, this paper introduces an indirect approach combining simulated household income with realizations of consumption behavior from survey data.  

This working paper examines the lack of reliable data on the number and quality of drug treatment services in Harris County.

The authors examine merits of using a gas geoeconomics approach to develop U.S. and EU policy options to bolster gas supplies and national security in Europe.

Public finance fellow Thomas Hogan analyzes the relationship between bank lending and the Federal Reserve's policy of paying interest on excess reserves (IOER).

The impending demise of petrodollar-supported capitalist Islamism, the failures of which begat 21st century terrorist Islamism, incentivizes the Muslim middle class and timocracies to find another outlet for Muslim liberation theology. This amplifies manifold the risks (and potential, but limited, benefits) of “Islamic finance.”  

In an economy with heterogeneous firms and heterogeneous consumers, the authors describe a general equilibrium where firm equity is priced by a supply and demand process. With a model robust to arbitrary, nonlinear tax functions, they investigate the efficiency of replacing the current U.S. tax regime with a policy of no corporate taxes and taxation of capital distributions to the household at progressive personal income tax rates.

Texas' ERCOT ISO is used as a model for examining the costs of replacing fossil fuels by wind generation and storage, and for comparing wind power with generation based on nuclear and storage.

The unfettered development of Houston's flood-prone areas undoubtedly magnified the tremendous damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, but zoning or other land use controls are unpopular on the Texas coast and are unlikely to be adopted as a result. With this in mind, the SSPEED Center at Rice University looked to innovation and the market system to find a creative solution to protect important natural, flood-prone areas from further development. 

The authors investigate two plausible causes for the significant price discount of U.S. crudes during the U.S. “shale boom” and evaluate how much each mattered.