Research Library

How much can demographic changes account for trends in the U.S. economy? This paper shows that a heterogeneous-agent, overlapping-generations model with historical demographic flows can generate several features of the U.S. economy over the past several decades, including a secular decline in economic growth, a rise in savings relative to GDP, a corresponding decline in real interest rates, and, in part, changes in wealth inequality.

In this working paper, the author examines the economic effects of enacting a proposal by the Biden administration to tax long term capital gains at ordinary income tax rates for those with taxable income above $1 million and tax unrealized gains at the time of death for single (joint) filers with more than $1 million ($2 million) in unrealized gains. A similar version of the report was prepared with the financial support of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation.

How can the U.S. government help the recovery of the post-transition Venezuelan oil and gas sector? The authors offer key recommendations.

The authors explore the history of the resource curse and provide summarize the working paper series titled “The Role of Foreign Direct Investment in Resource-Rich Regions.”

Venezuela, which has one of the largest hydrocarbon endowments in the world, offers a striking case study on the resource curse, write Francisco Monaldi, Igor Hernández and José La Rosa. This working paper is part of a series titled “The Role of Foreign Direct Investment in Resource-Rich Regions.”

The authors evaluate Argentina’s energy sector and test the hypothesis that investments in tight oil and shale gas extraction expose investors to fewer risks than extracting conventional oil and gas. This working paper is part of a series titled “The Role of Foreign Direct Investment in Resource-Rich Regions.”

A quantitative study examines how heightened geopolitical risk, coupled with lower oil prices, hampers the economic potential of mega construction projects in Arab Gulf states.

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.  

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

In this working paper, fellow John Diamond and Rice faculty scholar George Zodrow describe the Diamond-Zodrow model, which simulates the macroeconomic effects of corporate income tax reform proposals.