Research Library

Cultural myths — and by extension, the suppositions they inspire — have played a major role in shaping Venezuela's relationship with and management of oil resources throughout much of the last 100 years, writes nonresident fellow Luis Pacheco. To achieve sustainable economic and social development, Venezuela must move beyond such beliefs and establish a new approach that is more attuned to current times.

Vivian Ho, director of the Center for Health and Biosciences, examines some of the major reasons critics dislike the Affordable Care Act and offers policy recommendations for refining the legislation in the Annual Review of Medicine.

Days after Peru's Congress nearly impeached the country's president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, he pardoned his authoritarian predecessor, Alberto Fujimoro.

This brief explores how a quirk in the measurement of women’s labor force participation and the demographic peculiarities of the Persian Gulf have resulted in the significant undercounting of female citizen labor in the Gulf Cooperation Council. I

At least four states are currently considering a gross receipts tax (GRT) to improve revenues, yet Texas legislators have made attempts to repeal its franchise tax, a form of the GRT. Fellow Joyce Beebe examines this apparent conflict.

To either close deals or resolve disputes, parties and courts must be able to attach a credible economic value to water that may still be underground in the aquifer. In this brief, fellow Gabriel Collins proposes a means of estimating this value that opens the door for a direct comparison of the implied price paid for groundwater in a land purchase transaction and the price paid for an explicit agreement to acquire only the groundwater estate beneath a tract.

A scandal that involves high-ranking officials from Costa Rica's three branches of government is testing the country's reputation for democratic stability. 

The most likely future for NAFTA is neither continuity — that is off the table as per U.S. goals — nor a “modernized” agreement that the U.S. does not appear to want.

Nobody can ensure that the economic gamble underlying the 2013–2014 energy reform will achieve the desired or expected success. However, the author presents evidence demonstrating that Mexico has gradually been building the institutions that will be able to perform governmental operations with reasonable effectiveness.

In testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral Institutions, and International Economic, Energy, and Environmental Policy, nonresident scholar Todd Moss outlined how the United States can better utilize energy policy to pursue its objectives in sub-Saharan Africa.