Research Library

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.

Through an examination of crime patterns in a major urban center in Latin America — Mexico City— this study contributes to the development of a theoretical and empirical understanding of criminal activity and its correlation with space and time.

This report, produced in collaboration with the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs, analyzes findings of a survey on Houstonians’ views on the candidates in the Houston mayoral race: http://bit.ly/2PavYL9.

Measuring the costs of corruption around the world is challenging due to varying definitions of corruption, the invisibility of many corrupt acts, and the subjectivity of perceptions. In this research paper, postdoctoral research fellow Jose I. Rodriguez-Sanchez explores the difficulties of measuring corruption in Mexico.

This paper seeks to identify the key factors that explain why local officials in Mexico — mayors, former mayors, mayors-elect and mayoral candidates — are being killed and to provide policy alternatives to address this important threat to Mexican democracy.

NAFTA has neither been the enormous success that its supporters believe, nor the disaster that its detractors claim. Renegotiating NAFTA — or even threatening to repeal it — is not a high-stakes proposition. The treaty simply does not possess the leverage to deliver a major boost or setback to the U.S. manufacturing sector. 

This paper analyzes the links between transnational organized crime and the illicit wildlife trade in Mexico. It aims to provide policymakers with a better understanding of the seriousness of this crime and potential policy options that might help the international community in apprehending the culprits.

Authors Tony Payan and Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera lay out how Mexico must anticipate and resolve potential problems in organized crime, corruption and natural resource allocation priorities in order to successfully implement its energy reforms.

Criminal extortion is on the rise in Mexico, particularly along the northern border states. Author Gary Hale shows how this trend has fueled government corruption, with officials implicitly or explicitly aiding organized crime groups as they extort businesses and citizens.

The number of high-skilled Mexican entrepreneurs migrating to the United States has increased in recent years, but the trend is not solely in response to organized crime activity in Mexico. This research paper analyzes the various push and pull factors that lead these entrepreneurs to seek opportunities in the United States.