Research Library

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.”  

While academic and popular debates tend to focus on differential benefits and costs of trade across countries or industries, this brief highlights winners and losers at the level of individual firms. The authors demonstrate that preferential liberalization produces concentrated benefits among a relatively small number of very large and productive firms.

Nobody can ensure that the economic gamble underlying the 2013–2014 energy reform will achieve the desired or expected success. However, the author presents evidence demonstrating that Mexico has gradually been building the institutions that will be able to perform governmental operations with reasonable effectiveness.

In testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral Institutions, and International Economic, Energy, and Environmental Policy, nonresident scholar Todd Moss outlined how the United States can better utilize energy policy to pursue its objectives in sub-Saharan Africa.

The authors investigate whether stance of a religious tradition toward capitalism will help shape individual scientists’ views on science commercialization and whether the religious tradition of scientists correlates with their attitude toward the commercialization of science.

This issue brief examines how produced water recycling in Texas oilfields threatens landowners’ ability to earn revenue from selling frac water and disposal services, a more lucrative revenue stream compared to raising cattle.

As China’s demand for light oil products continues to drive incremental consumption growth, it is becoming apparent that commodities framed as “oil products” are increasingly not actually made from crude oil. Fellow Gabriel Collins explores the possible ramifications of this situation in this issue brief. He writes that oil producers — whether in Riyadh, Moscow or the Permian Basin — should take stock of how China’s growing use of “oil products” that do not actually come from crude oil may translate into effective reductions in demand and prices for the crude oil they produce.

Will increases in minimum wages improve child health? Fellow Farhan Majid discusses his recent study showing that a higher minimum wage may negatively impact children’s health in low- and middle-income countries in the September 2017 Health Policy Research newsletter.