The Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Qatar Leadership Centre hosted a roundtable on February 15-16, 2017, in Doha, Qatar, to discuss some of the most pressing challenges facing market participants in the global energy landscape, with a focus on several issues of paramount interest to Qatar and the broader Gulf Cooperation Council.

Recent academic research has shown that startup training institutions can greatly increase the number of startup firms receiving seed and early-stage venture capital for the first time. In this paper, the authors examine the startup training institutions in Houston, and what they are doing to open up the city’s pipeline of startups.

As China continues to open up to the transnational circulation of labor, ideas, technology and capital under globalization, one must wonder: will Chinese society’s more cosmopolitan and transnational groups continue to be guided by guanxi, the system of social networks and influential relationships that facilitate business and other dealings?

Taking a health-based approach toward curbing the rising use of synthetic cannabinoids, which has caused dangerous and sometimes fatal side effects in extreme cases, may be a more effective policy for the City of Houston, postdoctoral fellow Katharine A. Neill writes in this report.

The development of the petroleum sector has been characterized by a succession of cycles of investment and expropriation that have been particularly pronounced in Latin America. This paper analyzes the causes of these cycles and the lessons that can be derived and applied during the implementation of the petroleum reform in Mexico.

In this report, the authors analyze the potential benefits of expanding jail diversion programs for low-level drug offenses in Harris County.

In this paper, the author weighs the difficulties facing Venezuela in light of its dependence on oil export revenues.

Part of a study directed by the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute, Harvard University’s Geopolitics of Energy Project at the Kennedy School and the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Management.

A tiny, uninhabited chain of islands in the East China Sea is the focus of a growing dispute between China and Japan.

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I. Introduction

As the People’s Republic of China…