Research Library

Why does Texas have its own power grid, and how can its history inform the future of electric power in the state? Nonresident scholar Julie Cohn looks beyond the mythology surrounding the standalone Texas grid and finds that reliability and economics — not politics — were the major factors leading to isolation.

Research scholar José Iván Rodríguez-Sánchez examines the economic impact of remittances — the money sent home by migrants working abroad — and finds varying results at the state and municipal levels in Mexico. He also warns against relying too heavily on remittances to drive economic growth.

Without urgent action, the impact of China’s water shortages will ripple across the globe and dramatically perturb global markets for food, energy and industrial goods, write fellow Gabriel Collins and co-author Gopal Reddy.

With Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador pushing for the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to replace the Organization of American States (OAS), which the U.S. currently dominates, the future of security relations in the Western Hemisphere is in question. This paper assesses four possible future scenarios and offers policy recommendations for a reimagined OAS.

This paper maps out the network of alliances and subgroups within the two most powerful cartels in Mexico — the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación — and reveals key structural differences that could have important implications for policymakers.

High-skilled immigrants from emerging markets are playing an increasingly important role in the global knowledge economy, writes nonresident scholar Elizabeth Salamanca Pacheco. In this paper, Salamanca Pacheco explains how high-skilled migrants from Mexico are well positioned to alleviate a STEM talent shortage in the U.S. and stimulate innovation in their native country.

This paper analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing Mexico's new National Guard amid ongoing public health and safety crises and growing nationalism in Mexico and the United States.

David A. Gantz, the Will Clayton Fellow in Trade and International Economics, analyzes a wide range of factors — including the U.S.-China trade war, the entry into force of the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) and the COVID-19 pandemic — that are all contributing to the pressure on the U.S. to decouple from China and to shift supply chains back to North America.

The authors look at the key drivers impacting national security and defense relations between the United States and Mexico and offer four possible scenarios for the future, along with policy recommendations to support the avoidance of conflict.

In this paper, the author describes the types of associations migrants from Mexico have formed in the U.S. (including their aims, member profiles, etc.), and analyzes their social and political roles.