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.
This issue brief examines the signals conveyed by Mexico's 2014 energy reforms, and analyzes the limitations in law, institutional design and policy that may delay, if not derail, the reforms' success.
This issue brief identifies the four main reforms that the new Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government must undertake to revive the manufacturing industry in India.
Despite his sweeping electoral victory, it seems that Egypt's new president, General Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, has learned little from the past mistakes of Mubarak and Morsi.
On May 22, the House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, which specifies the budget and expenditures of the United States Department of Defense and sets the policies under which money (somewhat in excess of $600 billion) will be spent on our country’s defense. However, an amendment added to the bill will keep the Department of Defense from preparing for or performing any military activities that include any construction related to climate change.
Under proposed legislation to implement Mexico’s energy reforms, Pemex will remain a privileged state operator supporting exploration and production in most of the country's proven onshore and shallow water fields. It is not known if energy reform will effectively turn Pemex into a firm able to compete without policy bias against private investors.
Energy regulation under Mexico's energy-sector reforms are of great interest to investors, since autonomous regulators—protected from political pressures and able to make and sustain technical decisions—can guarantee greater legal consistency than government authorities exposed to political pressures. The difficulty was finding an alternative model that ensured the institutional strengthening of the agencies without relinquishing too much control of the executive branch.
Narendra Modi was sworn in as India’s new prime minister on Monday, a little over a week after a landslide victory at the polls. The resounding win gives Modi much greater freedom to implement his agenda than any Indian leader in recent years, says international economics fellow Russell Green. What will Modi’s India look like, and how will it affect the U.S.? Green, who spent four years in India as the U.S. Treasury Department’s first financial attaché to that country, explains.
Texas Hispanics were more than twice as likely as whites to have enrolled in health insurance plans offered through the Affordable Care Act's Health Insurance Marketplace between September 2013 and March 2014, according to a report released by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation.
The violent struggle between rival Mexican drug cartels and other criminal groups has left tens of thousands dead and towns across Mexico paralyzed with fear. With overwhelmed police forces relatively powerless to control drug-related murders and kidnappings, a growing number of vigilante organizations, or self-defense
groups, aim to restore order — but now even they are fighting, and killing, among themselves.