In this issue brief, the authors examine the amount of growth and transactional venture capital (VC) in Houston, finding the the city lacks sufficient levels of growth VC needed to support its goals of establishing a high-growth, high technology startup ecosystem.
This brief explores how a quirk in the measurement of women’s labor force participation and the demographic peculiarities of the Persian Gulf have resulted in the significant undercounting of female citizen labor in the Gulf Cooperation Council. I
At least four states are currently considering a gross receipts tax (GRT) to improve revenues, yet Texas legislators have made attempts to repeal its franchise tax, a form of the GRT. Fellow Joyce Beebe examines this apparent conflict.
To either close deals or resolve disputes, parties and courts must be able to attach a credible economic value to water that may still be underground in the aquifer. In this brief, fellow Gabriel Collins proposes a means of estimating this value that opens the door for a direct comparison of the implied price paid for groundwater in a land purchase transaction and the price paid for an explicit agreement to acquire only the groundwater estate beneath a tract.
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.
The most likely future for NAFTA is neither continuity — that is off the table as per U.S. goals — nor a “modernized” agreement that the U.S. does not appear to want.
Public finance fellow Joyce Beebe outlines the benefits of paid family leave for U.S. families and society in general, examines the experiences of three states with paid family leave, and presents policy issues that should be taken into consideration to successfully craft a nationwide paid family leave program.