What should new and established Houstonians know about area flooding caused by hurricanes? How can they avoid buying a home in a flood zone or contact the policymakers who decide where development can occur? Rice faculty fellow Jim Blackburn discusses these issues and more in this guide to living with flooding in Houston.
The authors compare views on the relationship between faith and health for two groups that are overrepresented in American Christianity and underrepresented in medical careers (African Americans and Latinos) with a group that is similarly religious but comparatively well-represented in medical professions (Korean Americans).
Daniel Bolger, Cleve Tinsley IV, Elaine Howard EcklundNovember 28, 2017
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.
Pablo M. Pinto, Leonardo Baccini, Stephen WeymouthNovember 21, 2017
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.
Texas' ERCOT ISO is used as a model for examining the costs of replacing fossil fuels by wind generation and storage, and for comparing wind power with generation based on nuclear and storage.
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.
The unfettered development of Houston's flood-prone areas undoubtedly magnified the tremendous damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, but zoning or other land use controls are unpopular on the Texas coast and are unlikely to be adopted as a result. With this in mind, the SSPEED Center at Rice University looked to innovation and the market system to find a creative solution to protect important natural, flood-prone areas from further development.
Faculty scholar Jim Blackburn proposes a series of realistic ideas that can substantially reduce misery and damage the next time a catastrophic storm like Harvey tears through the Houston-Galveston area.
