Research Library

Many argue that sales and excise taxes are regressive based on the strict relationship between annual income and taxes paid, but the burden of higher sales taxes may actually fall more heavily on households with higher lifetime incomes.

Public finance fellow Joyce Beebe discusses state and federal legislation aimed at granting states greater authority to collect sales taxes on remote online sales, as well as obstacles to those efforts.

To gain public support for Mexico’s energy reforms, the government promised a future of low gas prices. The author documents the fallout when gas prices instead shot up 20 percent. 

With the Texas Legislature now considering several bills that would decrease penalties for marijuana possession and legalize the use of medical marijuana to treat a variety of conditions, authors William Martin and Katharine A. Neill present updated findings in this new issue brief that support the case for reforming marijuana policy in Texas.

In 1972, a National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, comprising establishment figures chosen mostly by President Richard Nixon himself, issued a report that declared that “neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety” and recommended that Congress and state legislatures decriminalize the use and casual distribution of marijuana and seek means other than prohibition to discourage use. President Nixon ignored the report and Congress declined to consider its recommendations, but during the 40-plus years since its publication, at least 37 states have acted to refashion a crazy-quilt collection of prohibitions, nearly always in the direction favored by the commission. The specifics vary by state, but most reform legislation has followed one of three formulas: decriminalization of marijuana possession, legalization of marijuana for medical use, or legalization of marijuana for adult recreational use. In this issue brief, authors Katharine Neill and William Martin examine the facts and fears surrounding each of these options.

With the recent approval of Mexico's energy reform and the current enthusiasm of South American governments to attract foreign investment in oil, one might be tempted to conclude that the tide of resource nationalism is receding in the region. Nevertheless, the cycles of investment and expropriation that have characterized the oil sector in Latin America are unlikely to go away.

This issue brief identifies the four main reforms that the new Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government must undertake to revive the manufacturing industry in India.