Welcome to Our Research Archive
Search and filter by content type, issue area, author, and keyword
April 21, 2021
The SEC Demands a One-Size-Fits-All Climate “Risk” Disclosure System
Modesty is not a defining characteristic for numerous policy-makers in Washington, among them regulators asserting that climate “risks” are significant for individual firms and economic sectors—precisely how do they know?—and that, therefore, they must be reported so that investors can have more rather than less information. Allison Herren Lee, the acting Chairman of the Securities and…
April 15, 2021
Where We Are Headed: Making the US Poorer and OPEC+ Richer
The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is brightening, in substantial part as a result of the global inoculation effort, however slowly and unevenly. With this improving public-health outlook comes a prospective renewal of worldwide economic growth generally, and in industrial, commercial, and transportation sectors in particular. That would engender an expansion in the…
April 15, 2021
To Reshape Federal Science Funding, Lawmakers Should Look to the Past
With the end of the war against COVID-19 now in sight, the National Science Foundation has become a battleground in the fight over the future of federal science funding. Tucked away in President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan is a $50 billion funding increase for the National Science Foundation (NSF) — over $40 billion more than the…
March 29, 2021
The Electrical Engineers Collide with the Climate Politicians
Having suffered for decades from natural disasters, perverse federal policies, local mismanagement and much more, the people of Puerto Rico are in need of reforms in many dimensions, prominent among them a modernized, efficient and reliable electric power system. And that need is more-or-less immediate, as the rickety commonwealth electricity system finally is operating, however…
March 1, 2021
The Electric-vehicle Campaign Comes to Minnesota
Electric vehicles are all the rage, in particular among public officials who do not have to face voters. Not so much among consumers, who know their individual needs and strive to make purchase decisions that satisfy them. These realities explain why the proponents of policies forcing ever more EVs upon the market prefer to implement such…
February 17, 2021
With Politicized Lending, Biden Aims to Revive ‘Operation Choke Point’
In one of the last executive actions of the Trump administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency published an important final “Fair Access to Financial Services” rule requiring that large banks and federal savings associations make lending decisions based upon “individualized, quantitative risk-based analysis and management of customer risk.” Translation: The lenders are not to…
January 28, 2021
The Case Against ‘STEM’
Among the more influential truisms about science today is that it is essential for technological — and thus economic — progress. It is fitting, then, that the apparent slowing of American innovation has fueled a debate about the importance of science and the need for the federal government to support it. Indeed, there is growing…
January 26, 2021
Basic Science Helped Us Win World War II. It’s Also Why We’ll Defeat COVID-19
President Biden has announced a “full-scale wartime effort” to vaccinate the American people against the coronavirus. This is hardly the first time our struggle against the pandemic has been likened to warfare. Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership that helped spur the invention of two COVID-19 vaccines last year, has often been compared to the government’s programs during World…
January 23, 2021
Climate Policy Is the Purview of Congress, Not the Courts
The Supreme Court on January 19 heard oral arguments in a case (BP PLC v Mayor and City Council of Baltimore) that addresses an exceedingly narrow topic: whether or not the “federal officer jurisdiction” doctrine should direct climate lawsuits by states and municipalities against energy producers into state or federal court. Most such lawsuits attempt to…
January 21, 2021
COVID-19 Vaccines: An Overnight Success Decades in the Making
After decades of being told it takes years to produce new drugs, we’ve now been spoiled by the magicians in pharma who invented multiple COVID-19 vaccines in mere months. Policy-makers and pundits will expect no less from technology in the future. And not just for diseases, but for all manner of societal challenges, from cancer to…