Research Library

Fellows Joyce Beebe and Edward M. Emmett discuss the child care shortage in the U.S. and evaluate a variety of policy solutions.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative recently stepped back from ongoing negotiations on digital trade at the World Trade Organization, citing unsettled domestic policy, and suspended support for digital trade rules in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework too. But if the U.S. wants to be a part of the conversation, it should reengage and help craft rules flexible enough to meet its future domestic policy needs, writes nonresident fellow Simon Lester.

The number of children walking and biking to school has been in decline for more than 50 years, yet associated death and injury rates remain high. In a new brief, nonresident fellow Zoabe Hafeez and co-author Shruti Natarajan review child pedestrian and bicyclist injuries in Houston, analyzing the worst hotspots and identifying how infrastructure improvements can have outsized benefits.

America is facing a serious labor shortage. Expanding the TN visa — a pivotal pathway for Canadian and Mexican professionals originally created through NAFTA — can help the country close its growing workforce gaps, writes Tony Payan, director of the Center for the U.S. and Mexico.

Experts from the Edward P. Djerejian Center for the Middle East explore the challenges facing the world’s 36 million refugees and internally displaced people.

Yemen’s Houthi have mounted a selective counter-shipping campaign in the Red Sea that has disrupted global trade between Asia and Europe. In a new issue brief, fellow Jim Krane describes how the attacks have triggered major shipping delays and expenses for firms based in countries friendly to Israel — effectively acting as economic sanctions and demonstrating the power of a non-state actor to undermine global norms around freedom of navigation.

Fifty years after the 1973 oil embargo, Baker Institute Edward P. Djerejian Center for the Middle East and Center for Energy Studies hosted a conference to examine lessons learned from the embargo and their renewed relevance for today’s energy crises. Featuring remarks from His Royal Highness Prince Turki Al Faisal Al Saud, the conference also included expert panels with industry leaders, other former policymakers, and academics.

In a new brief, McClain Sampson, fellow in Maternal and Reproductive Health, and co-author Priscilla P. Kennedy summarize how the recent Texas Medicaid and CHIP extension will benefit families and explore the expected impacts of this extension.

Baker Institute experts examine the implications of the Alabama Supreme Court's recent ruling that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. Listen as they explore both the science of human embryo research and the impacts on access to reproductive health care in the United States.

Qualities like amazing tensile strength and electrical conductivity offer a huge range of uses for carbon nanotubes. In a new policy brief, fellow Rachel A. Meidl and her co-authors Dana Goerzen and Daniel A. Heller explain that to ensure carbon nanotubes’ role in a circular, sustainable economy, a coordinated system for classifying, testing, and identifying CNTs and a life cycle approach to risk assessments are needed to better understand impacts to facilitate consistent communication among researchers, industries, and policymakers.