Research Library

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognizes the development of carbon-based catalysts. S&T Policy research assistant Flora Naylor writes that their discovery emphasizes the value of federal funding in supporting fundamental scientific research.

Mexico's criminal organizations are undoubtedly responsible for the massive caravan of Haitian, Cuban, Central American and South American migrants that arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border last week, writes Gary Hale. Smugglers will take advantage of the chaos, surging multiple shipments of drugs and more migrants into the U.S.

In 1980, the Mariel Boatlift brought not only tens of thousands of political refugees from Cuba to Florida, but a significant number of criminals, leading to soaring murder and crime rates in the U.S. With Mexico now planning the release of potentially thousands of federal prisoners, is history set to repeat itself?

Ten months after the pandemic began, partisan division is severely inhibiting the United States’ COVID-19 response. The health consequences of the continued political divide could not be clearer, as the pandemic has grown beyond many experts’ worst predictions.

Read the Baker Institute Blog for the latest updates on the spread of Covid-19 and the best defenses against it.

The death of George Floyd has accelerated calls for police reform. Although decriminalizing drugs and the people who use them will not end police violence, it is part of the structural change needed to fix the problem, writes fellow Katharine Neill Harris.

The collective trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic may provide a clearer understanding of why people use drugs — to help us see it not as a moral failing or a brain malfunction, but as a fundamentally human response to negative life events. Read more at the Baker Institute Blog.

The authors explain why $100 billion allocated by the CARES act to compensate health care providers for unreimbursed expenses and lost revenue from may be woefully inadequate.

Even before the pandemic, Mexico’s health care system was in crisis, with shortages of medical supplies, drugs, and personnel. A president that is downplaying the outbreak, brandishing amulets to “protect” him from the virus, isn’t helping matters. Baker Institute blog: https://bit.ly/2w6KJHV

Baker Institute health policy experts provide links to some of the sources they found helpful in understanding developments in the coronavirus outbreak.