Research Library

COP28 brought together world leaders, climate experts, and other key stakeholders to discuss progress on global climate goals. As a member of the Turkish delegation, Rice faculty scholar Gökçe Günel offers her take on the summit’s outcomes.

What's behind the rise of U.S. manufacturers “nearshoring” to Mexico? In this report, fellow David A. Gantz explores the historical drivers fueling this trend and the reasons why Mexico may struggle to attract foreign investment in the near future.

The 2024 Mexico Country Outlook report analyzes key policy issues ahead of Mexico’s June 2024 elections, from foreign investment and regulatory challenges to migration and public security.

Under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico is squandering a once-in-a-generation opportunity to encourage significant new foreign investment. His successor will need to reverse course, writes David A. Gantz, the Will Clayton Fellow in Trade and International Economics.

This report evaluates the pandemic’s effect on the religious lives, mental health and views of government of Muslims across five predominantly Muslim countries.

As climate change becomes an increasingly prominent driver of migration, this report investigates possible pathways to ensure that “climate refugees” receive adequate legal protection.

In the last of a series of reports on the USMCA, fellow David Gantz considers the trade-related matters that could affect the success of the USMCA as a mechanism for encouraging investment, creating new jobs and enhancing consumer welfare in North America.

The USMCA will have potentially significant impacts for the textiles and apparel industry, but the free agricultural trade that is vital to all three NAFTA parties remains largely untouched, writes David A. Gantz.

By Paul Lagunes, Baker Institute for Public Policy; Xiaoxuan Yang, Columbia University; and Andrés Castro, Columbia University. Corruption is a persistent problem throughout Latin America. Higher rates of perceived corruption are associated with lower levels of economic welfare and direct foreign investment, write the authors.

Fossil fuel subsidies have allowed energy exporting countries to distribute resource revenue, bolstering legitimacy for governments, many of which are not democratically elected. But subsidy benefits are dwarfed by the harmful consequences of encouraging uneconomic use of energy. Now, with consumption posing a threat to long-term exports, governments face a heightened need to raise prices that have come to be viewed as entitlements. While reforms of state benefits are notoriously politically dangerous, previous experience shows that subsidies can be rolled back without undermining government legitimacy — even in autocratic settings — given proper preparation.