IC² Institute Blog

When only 15% of the 2800 new jobs created by a huge $1.5 billion West Texas wind farm development will be based in the U.S., something is wrong, especially because U.S. taxpayers may provide $450 million of the project’s costs via the federal stimulus program.  That’s a taxpayer investment of over $1 million per U.S. job, and while there [...]

The lead above-the-fold story in today’s Wall Street Journal heralds the possible end to our recession with the release of Q3 ‘09 GDP figures.  The 3.5% annual rate of expansion in the third quarter halts four straight quarters of decline during a recession that officially began in December 2007.  But what factors drove the Q3 expansion? From [...]

What effect might national healthcare reform have on Texas-Mexico border communities?  What reform initiatives to improve healthcare outcomes along the border should be included in the healthcare reform debate?  A new article in Texas Business Review by Nuria Homedes and Antonio Ugalde looks at healthcare along the border from a bi-national perspective.  Perhaps surprisingly, a [...]

One hundred economists spent 3 days discussing, debating, and diciphering local and national economic trends during the 63rd annual conference of the Association for University Business and Economic Research.  Keynote speaker David Altig, director of research at the Atlanta Fed, cautioned the group during his address that the economy was far from recovered and took issue [...]

What factors influence a high school senior’s decision to go to college? New survey research, combined with Texas Workforce Commission data on employment, seeks to identify factors that heavily influence higher ed and workforce outcomes among Central Texas high school graduates. In the August issue of Texas Business Review, Deanna Schexnayder and her colleagues at [...]

As the debate goes on in Texas over whether to continue to finance road construction with tolls, there is new evidence that increasing tolls charged to cross the bridges between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez does not affect traffic volumes.  With such inelastic demand for border crossings by foot, car, or truck, local policymakers may have more leeway [...]

Welcome to the new IC2 Blog, intended to give program managers, researchers, visiting scholars, and staff at the Institute a chance to share their current ideas and research.
I wanted to use my first posting to point toward a couple of the most recent reports and studies from the Bureau of Business Research. My colleagues in [...]