Although Aboriginal people make up a small percentage of the world's population, they are disproportionately affected by poverty and neglected tropical diseases.
While much media attention recently has focused on the geopolitical fault lines that connect Syria’s violence to wider region-wide trends, the plight of individual women, men, and children displaced within Syria or living in camps beyond its borders shows no sign of ending. As Secretary of State John Kerry has stated, the humanitarian situation in Syria is "an outrage" but the violence only looks set to worsen as opposition groups turn on each other and radical trans-national elements feed off the resulting vacuum of authority and control. This is the task as the international community prepares to reconvene in Switzerland on January 22, writes Baker Institute fellow Kristian Coates Ulrichsen in the Baker Institute Blog.
Latin America has witnessed an unprecedented natural resource boom in the last decade. However, the macroeconomic and social achievements cannot hide the significant challenges and some negative effects of the mining boom, including the so-called resource curse.
Energy experts from government, industry and academia investigate influences on oil and gas investments, as well as future directions for global commodity pricing.
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.
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.
