Research Library

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement offers an opportunity to deepen U.S.-Mexico economic ties without reopening the still contentious North American Free Trade Agreement for negotiation. It may also serve as a vehicle for advancing the current Mexican government’s economic reform agenda. The leaders of the U.S. and Mexico believe that the TPP will bolster domestic economic growth.

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.

The percentage of Texans without health insurance dropped after the first enrollment period of the Affordable Care Act, according to a report released Sept. 3.

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.

Academic mobility is critical for robust collaborations in education, research and innovation between the U.S. and Mexico. Governments in both countries, in cooperation with nongovernmental actors, should provide a framework to develop mechanisms that generate and sustain a meaningful exchange of students, faculty, and staff from educational institutions at all levels of post-secondary education.

A deadly virus named MERS has spread from Saudi Arabia to over a dozen countries since 2012. While the chances for widespread infection are remote due to the virus's low human-to-human transmission rate, all governments should nevertheless support academic freedom and scientific collaboration to keep local outbreaks of viruses like MERS from becoming serious pandemics.

The BRICS clearly want something tangible to demonstrate their global prominence and the power of non-Western values. Russell Green examines the critical issues that must be resolved before the BRICS bank can open its doors.

Half of Texans who are eligible for premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and who looked for health plans in the ACA's Health Insurance Marketplace said cost was the main reason they didn’t enroll in a plan. That’s just one of the findings in a report released today by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation. The report specifically looked at lower- to middle-income families in Texas who don’t have access to health insurance through an employer and who earn too much to qualify for public programs. That group includes approximately 2 million uninsured Texans and is a key target population of the ACA. The report found that virtually all of the target population knew about the ACA Marketplace and the available subsidies for health insurance premiums. In addition, the report found that one-third of those aware of the marketplace looked for information on health insurance plans. Another one-third planned to look for that information in the future. However, many Texans who looked for plans in the ACA Marketplace still didn’t enroll in a health insurance plan. The report found half of those who did not enroll said costs were the main reason – either costs were too high or they didn’t have enough money to enroll at that time. The report is the sixth in a series on the implementation of the ACA in Texas. It was co-authored by Elena Marks, the president and CEO of the Episcopal Health Foundation and a health policy scholar at the Baker Institute, and Vivian Ho, the chair in health economics at the Baker Institute, a professor of economics at Rice and a professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “The affordability of Health Insurance Marketplace plans, even with subsidies, has been an open question from the outset,” Marks said. “Perceptions about affordability may be preventing some Texans from enrolling in a plan. The intense, politically charged dialogue around the ACA in the state may have created misconceptions about the costs.” Uninsured Texans may also think health coverage is too expensive because the cost is new to them, the report found. Even with subsidies, some families still would pay some amount for coverage – an added expense, regardless of the amount, not previously part of the family budget. Also, the report found there’s evidence many uninsured don’t value health insurance or believe they can still use charity care programs that offer free or discounted medical care on a pay-as-you-go basis. As the report showed, most of the uninsured knew about the ACA Marketplace and two-thirds looked, or planned to look, for information on health insurance plans. However, the report also discovered 29 percent not only hadn’t looked for marketplace information, they also didn’t plan to look for information in the future. “Many of those who didn’t buy insurance will pay a penalty of $95 or 1 percent of income on their 2014 tax return,” Ho said. “That penalty rises to $695 or 2.5 percent of income in 2016, which will likely lead to more people enrolling in coming years.” The Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS)-Texas report is based on a national project that provides timely information on implementation issues under the Affordable Care Act and changes in health insurance coverage and related health outcomes. The Episcopal Health Foundation and Baker Institute are partnering to fund studies of and report on key factors about Texans obtained from an expanded representative sample of Texas residents. Today's report contains responses from 1,595 Texans in September 2013 and 1,538 in March 2014. The survey was developed by the Urban Institute, conducted by the company GfK and jointly funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Urban Institute. The analyses and conclusions based on HRMS-Texas are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Urban Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation or the Ford Foundation.