Research Library

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.

Rising crime and violence in Mexico threaten to derail the economic reforms that are President Enrique Peña Nieto's legacy.

Houston and Harris County area law enforcement leaders weigh in on the need for drug policy reforms in the United States.

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.

A scandal that involves high-ranking officials from Costa Rica's three branches of government is testing the country's reputation for democratic stability. 

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.

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.

Ken Medlock, senior director of the Center for Energy Studies, explores how the Trump administration’s approach to international trade could impact energy markets in a special issue of the IEEJ Energy Journal.