Research Library

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For both generic and patented cancer drugs, the free-market economy has not worked well. Solutions are needed to maintain reasonable drug prices that allow for corporate profits and are affordable to patients and to the U.S. health care system.

Under this study, the Baker Institute will embark on a comprehensive study on the interaction of the oil investment cycle and the general business cycle, including consideration of how the global economy and patterns of industry capital investment are influenced by oil price shocks.

Participants of the student-led Public Diplomacy and Global Policy Program report the findings of the 2013 colloquium.

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The causes and consequences of rising oil price over the past decade have been the subject of much debate. The role of speculation in financial markets has come increasingly under the microscope, with many economists arguing that in commodity markets such as oil, inventory adjustment should prevent speculative pressures from unduly influencing price. This paper investigates whether speculative pressures can exert an influence on the price of storable commodities, such as crude oil and natural gas.

In a recent commentary, Baker Institute science and technology policy experts described two international court cases that aimed to define “research” — and that ultimately arrived at two different answers. “What makes this interesting is that the courts’ definition of ‘research’ was based on politics — what the court wanted the end result to be,” said Kirstin Matthews, the institute’s fellow in science and technology policy. To reach a decision prohibiting human embryonic stem cell (hESC) patents, the EU court ruled that “research” occurs in a continuum. To reach a decision supporting federal funding of stem cell research, the U.S. court ruled that “research” involves a specific project.

This report, published by the Wilson Center, seeks to understand and define the gang issue in Mexico, establish the regional histories and sociologies of what is known about these gangs, and understand the causes of youth gang involvement.

The emphasis is on the deterioration of the participation of the political institutions and politicians before the citizenry in Costa Rica, which shows a process of exhaustion, loss of legitimacy of institutions and actors. This process goes back a few decades and shows no sign, in the short term, of the emergence of new structures in the political system. This paper systematizes the morphology of exhaustion and identifies the trends in which the reform can be based. Such reform should be based on constitutional engineering and should support the political reform process from the tendencies of change that are expressed in the political system. Published in Revista Derecho Electoral, December 2013. In Spanish only.

A speaker series addressing a variety of important topics related to Latin America.