Research Library

Last week, the Joe Biden administration released a long-awaited executive order containing a government-wide outline for digital assets, focusing on cryptocurrency. The guidance is a welcome and timely development for both regulators and investors.

"With the pressures of climate change and the urgency to incorporate alternative energy resources like wind and solar, the fixation on the purported benefits of energy transition technologies overshadows the glaring reality — an absence of strategy around identifying and quantifying other life cycle externalities, such as waste disposal or environmental impacts," write fellow Rachel Meidl and research assistant Mathilde Saada. Read more on the Baker Institute Blog.

By subsidizing only electric vehicles and EV batteries produced by union labor in the U.S., the auto industry could face trouble in valuable trade partnerships with Canada and Mexico, writes fellow David Gantz.

A lignite mine on the border of Poland and the Czech Republic is caught between global environmental and local economic concerns. For COP26 to make headway on climate action, the authors write, it must consider the local implications while proposing solutions.

The federal government aims to narrow the $1 trillion gap between cryptocurrency taxes owed and those actually paid. Read how it's doing so in the Baker Institute Blog.

The first step to reducing methane, Agerton and Gilbert argue, is to directly measure it. Their new Forbes post explains why inventory-based incentives that merely estimate emissions must give way to direct methane monitoring.

Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) have experienced a massive surge in popularity over the last year. How do SPACs work, and what are some of the tax implications that investors may overlook? Public finance fellow Joyce Beebe explains on the Baker Institute Blog: https://bit.ly/3t5eMH8

2021 changes to Mexico’s Hydrocarbon Law are expressions of state power through legal reforms, and are exceptionally alarming. Nonresident scholar Miriam Grunstein explains in the Baker Institute Blog.

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, which became law in mid-March, left out the mandate to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, but it did lead to an open policy discussion about current minimum wage standards. In a post for the Baker Institute Blog, public finance fellow Joyce Beebe considers some of the pros and cons of increasing the minimum wage and possible future developments.

The atmospheric concentration of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) — the most potent greenhouse gas known to humanity and a chemical that is frequently used as an electrical insulator — is growing and thereby contributing to global warming. In a post for the Baker Institute blog, experts from the Center for Energy Studies explain whether we should be worried and what can be done to mitigate the risks.