This paper examines the cash flow and financial issues affecting Venezuela’s PDVSA, as well as the operational challenges facing the country’s oil industry.

This brief gauges the impact of India's drastic, surprise move to eliminate "black money" by requiring holders to redeem certain rupee notes by the end of the year. If not redeemed, such notes will become illegal tender.

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.

Using the Guadalupe County Groundwater Conservation District as a case study, this journal article examines the benefits of a three-dimensional water management system to better manage groundwater usage in Texas and outlines the process for implementing such a system within other groundwater conservation districts in the state.

Previous studies of tobacco policies aimed at reducing hospitalizations may have overestimated the benefits of bans on public smoking and underestimated the benefits of cigarette taxes, according to new research by the Baker Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, Yale University, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Public-place smoking bans play a critical role in improving public health, and we are not arguing that smoking bans be lifted in restaurants, bars and workplaces,” said research co-author Vivian Ho, the chair in health economics at the Baker Institute and director of the institute’s Center for Health and Biosciences. “However, policy makers and public health workers must be realistic in understanding the benefits of alternative policy interventions like taxes and bans. We found that raising cigarette taxes can have an immediate beneficial effect in terms of reducing costly hospitalizations. As for smoking bans, while these may eventually lower hospitalizations, our research found no immediate benefit in terms of reduced hospitalizations.”

Japan's once-booming economy has been somnolent, mainly as a result of deflation and decreased productivity. This issue brief discusses Abenomics — the country's strategy for achieving economic growth — and the headwinds created by the demographic forces of aging in Japan.

The percentage of young adults ages 18 to 34 in Texas without health insurance has dropped by 35 percent since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went into effect.

This issue brief argues that institutional changes, along with greater representation of women in politics, are needed to combat governmental corruption in Latin America.

Abstract

Alternative economic theories yield dramatically different prescriptions for optimal capital taxation in small…

State "right to try" laws can give terminally ill patients early access to experimental drugs and medical devices — but they arguably make safety and efficacy secondary to speedy access.