Skip to main content
Highlighting the dynamic economy of Texas, northern Louisiana and southern New Mexico

Steve Estes, the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service agent for Taylor County, offers his perspective on how ranchers, farmers and city dwellers can collectively work to ensure that the area makes the best decisions regarding precious water resources

Ethan Dixon, Robert Leigh and Pia Orrenius

Funding for water infrastructure improvements has emerged as a priority for the Legislature during its 2025 legislative session. Absent changes to policy, Texans could face significant water shortages during droughts and constraints on future growth and economic development.

Garrett Golding, Diego Morales-Burnett and Kunal Patel

New Mexico has become a U.S. leader in energy production over the past five years, drawing on Permian Basin reserves in the southeastern corner of the state. Oil and gas proceeds fund an increasing share of state government, most notably involving education programs.

Ray Perryman, principal of Waco-based The Perryman Group, has been an observer of the Texas economy for more than four decades. He offers his views of what has propelled Texas since the 1980s oil bust and the state’s future prospects, and he recounts how he grew his economics firm.

Enrique Dussel Peters, a professor at the Graduate School of Economics at the Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México and coordinator of the university’s Center for Chinese–Mexican Studies, discusses trade flows between the U.S., Mexico and China and their prospects.

Jesse Thompson and Prithvi Kalkunte

Texas is undergoing a boom in technology and energy-related construction that follows a pandemic-era warehouse and logistics building surge.

Show post archive

Southwest Economy

Southwest Economy is published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System.

Articles may be reprinted on the condition that the source is credited to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.