Research Library

Rising crime and violence in Mexico threaten to derail the economic reforms that are President Enrique Peña Nieto's legacy.

A scandal that involves high-ranking officials from Costa Rica's three branches of government is testing the country's reputation for democratic stability. 

The most likely future for NAFTA is neither continuity — that is off the table as per U.S. goals — nor a “modernized” agreement that the U.S. does not appear to want.

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.

Nobody can ensure that the economic gamble underlying the 2013–2014 energy reform will achieve the desired or expected success. However, the author presents evidence demonstrating that Mexico has gradually been building the institutions that will be able to perform governmental operations with reasonable effectiveness.

This issue brief examines how produced water recycling in Texas oilfields threatens landowners’ ability to earn revenue from selling frac water and disposal services, a more lucrative revenue stream compared to raising cattle.

Mexico initiated a series of structural reforms in 2013, including major changes to policies governing telecommunications. Nonresident scholar Clara Luz Álvarez explores the implications of a recent ruling by Mexico’s Supreme Court on one of the related laws passed by Congress in a blog post for the Baker Institute Blog.

Aside from the massive cost of constructing a physical barrier along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, factors such as private and tribal land ownership and the impact on the environment must be taken into account.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro appears to be a month away from destroying all remnants of what was once one of Latin America's most stable democracies.

Mexico is gradually laying the foundation for an oil and gas sector where private—along with some state-owned—international companies are taking central stage. However, authorities should not ignore the necessity of developing a domestic oil and gas sector, writes Adrian Duhalt in a post for the Baker Institute blog.