Research Library

Public finance fellow John Diamond recently testified before the Texas House Ways and Means Committee on dynamic scoring and analysis use in tax policy.

North America is emerging as a virtual supply center of the international energy market, a development that has implications for the economic and geopolitical stature of the entire continent.

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.

Mexico must address two key questions in order to realize the promise of greater employment opportunities: Does the country’s current workforce have the needed skills to adequately respond to increases in production, and is the country allocating the necessary resources to respond to the demand for future skills? This issue brief focuses on education's role in reducing the workforce skills gap that Mexico will face as the energy sector expands.

This issue brief explores China’s deepening relationship with Costa Rica, which severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 2007 to strengthen its economic ties with the PRC. China’s relationship with Costa Rica has opened the possibility for the PRC to reach out to other countries in the region.

Technological progress in the exploration and production of oil and gas during the 2000s has led to a boom in upstream investment and has increased the domestic supply of fossil fuels. It is unknown, however, how many jobs this boom has created. Using time-series methods at the national level and dynamic panel methods at the state level to understand how the increase in exploration and production activity has impacted employment, this paper finds robust statistical support for the hypothesis that changes in drilling for oil and gas as captured by rig counts do, in fact, have an economically meaningful and positive impact on employment.

Achieving the decentralization of citizen responsibility is the biggest challenge not only in waste management but also in public services as a whole. This type of decentralization refers not to the transfer of government functions to citizens, but rather to the need for the citizen to see herself as an active participant in the urban system.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, rural to urban migration over the past few decades has led to an important demographic transition. In 2010, the urban population was estimated around 79.4 percent and is expected to reach close to 90 percent by 2050. As people concentrate in urban areas, cities will have to manage and deal with increased social, economic and environmental pressure. Already, food security presents itself as a priority, given that millions of people in the region face hunger and malnutrition.

Public finance fellow John Diamond analyzed the proposed Tax Reform Act of 2014 in testimony before the House Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures on July 30, 2014.

Neal Lane, senior fellow in science and technology policy, testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on July 17, 2014. Lane is co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Science's project on New Models for U.S. Science and Technology Policy, and his testimony addressed the project's objective of sustaining a long-term, nonpartisan, national focus on science and technology policy issues of vital importance to the country.