ABSTRACT
Texas can be characterized as a land of diversity. Its sheer size (268,000 square miles) encompasses a multitude of geographic and topographic features ranging from coastline to mountainous terrain, marshland to desert habitat, and uninhabited to densely populated landscapes. In some respects, Texas resembles a nation. It has a unique history relative to other U.S. states, and this has generated some institutional differences. For a few years in the 1800s, before joining the United States, Texas was a nation. Texas is slightly larger than Ecuador and more than twice the size of Italy. Today’s population of 21 million exceeds that of many other countries. From an economic perspective, the gross state product of Texas totaled more than $989 billion in 2005, which, if Texas were an independent nation, would rank its economy sixteenth in the world. 1
