Research Library

Rice faculty scholar Leslie Schwindt-Bayer shares key findings from a recently published book she edited, “Gender and Representation in Latin America," which examines the factors that help increase women’s political presence in Latin American governments.

While academic and popular debates tend to focus on differential benefits and costs of trade across countries or industries, this brief highlights winners and losers at the level of individual firms. The authors demonstrate that preferential liberalization produces concentrated benefits among a relatively small number of very large and productive firms.

The author assesses the impact of inequality in Latin America and the methods used to measure it. 

Most analysis of NAFTA begins by citing the huge increase in bilateral trade between the U.S., Canada and Mexico since 1993. U.S.-Mexico trade—exports plus imports—has grown three and a half times faster than U.S. GDP since NAFTA began in 1994. If NAFTA were solely responsible for that trade, renegotiating it on more favorable terms might have big payoffs. However, there are seven problems with thinking NAFTA has mattered or can matter very much.

This issue brief offers insights into the evolution and future of Mexico's Comprehensive Plan for the Southern Border to stem migration flows from Central America.

This issue brief examines how globalization has aided the spread of transnational organized crime and the challenges to combating it.

An investment strategy that generates financial returns while directing funds to entities providing goods and services to the poor is making headway in Latin America.

In this brief, the authors examine the link between oil and female labor force participation in the Middle East and North Africa.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is starting her second term in office facing economic and political problems that feed into each other. These problems can be attributed to a large extent to mistakes her administration made during her first term. Rousseff’s macroeconomic policy proved to be inconsistent, and the choices she made in some key economic sectors, especially energy, were demonstrably disastrous. Rousseff now faces the enormous challenge of reconciling the leftwing populism that led her to victory with the inescapable need to regain the trust of the most dynamic sectors of Brazilian society, including the private sector.

South America is likely facing a "second wave" of Chinese investment. How will China's rise to global economic power — and its transition to a new economic growth model — impact South America?