Research Library

What structural and nonstructural solutions could better protect the Houston-Galveston area from the devastating impact of hurricanes and severe storms? Baker Institute fellows Jim Blackburn and Regina Buono studied the issue from legal, policy and governmental perspectives.

Using Texas as a case study, this paper addresses which policies are desirable to best manage and regulate the supply of brackish groundwater.

Texas loses between five to six million acre-feet of water per year to evaporation from surface water supply reservoirs. Aquifer storage and recovery (ASR), whereby water supplies are stored underground, may provide a useful strategy for managing and protecting water supplies.

As the implementation of Mexico’s historic energy reform gets underway, the debate has tended to overlook a key question at the intersection of technology and the new legislation: How can Mexico create an institutional framework supported by policies, laws and organizations to facilitate technology transfers and foster local innovation? Simply put, how will international oil companies transfer technology to Mexican companies and research facilities?

This paper investigates how new potential and proposed regulations will influence the natural gas market in the United States in the coming decades, using the Rice World Gas Trade Model (RWGTM) to examine scenarios in which domestic natural gas development is stressed in a variety of ways. It considers a range of possible policy actions from the federal to the local level.

A growing number of Brazilian companies are expanding internationally. These companies are part of the transformation reshaping the global investment environment. They have shifted their international strategy from being based exclusively on exports to becoming foreign investors in countries such as Peru, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, once barred from entering the U.S., is getting a rock star welcome on his first trip here since being elected in May. “Am I the only India follower who is bored with Modi’s spectacle of a U.S. visit?” asks international economics fellow Russell Green. “The glitz is fun, but I am an economic policy wonk, and from my perspective, there is little to capture the imagination.”

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement offers an opportunity to deepen U.S.-Mexico economic ties without reopening the still contentious North American Free Trade Agreement for negotiation. It may also serve as a vehicle for advancing the current Mexican government’s economic reform agenda. The leaders of the U.S. and Mexico believe that the TPP will bolster domestic economic growth.

Mexico must address two key questions in order to realize the promise of greater employment opportunities: Does the country’s current workforce have the needed skills to adequately respond to increases in production, and is the country allocating the necessary resources to respond to the demand for future skills? This issue brief focuses on education's role in reducing the workforce skills gap that Mexico will face as the energy sector expands.

This issue brief proposes a framework for awarding bids in a public tender for exploration blocks. The context for the proposal is Mexico’s energy reform of 2013-2014.