El objetivo de "Pequeñas economías, grandes desafíos" es profundizar la comprensión de los desafíos y opciones de política económica que enfrentan los países de Centroamérica y República Dominicana en su cambiante proceso de desarrollo económico y social. En consecuencia, su enfoque...

In this paper, I discuss the reasons for Costa Rica's economic performance over the last quarter of a century. Three complementary sets of policies (investments in human capital, careful stabilization, and an intelligent and aggressive integration into the world economy) explain the successful...

This study discusses how best to identify the obstacles that separate people from markets in the context of the global economy. The answer lies in the same dynamic that is shaping global competition, namely, the increasing role of global supply chains in world trade. That naturally leads to the...

The empirical literature addressing links between the labor and the marriage markets is numerous and varied. Despite this, the theoretical (equilibrium) literature that explicitly links the two markets is less developed, particularly so with frictional markets. We build an equilibrium search...

This paper explores the development of public sector capabilities for Productive Development Policies in Costa Rica through four case studies of successful experiences, with less successful cases presented as counterfactuals. To some extent the paper tests the Technical, Organizational and...

This paper summarizes the findings of the recent Inter-American Development Bank book Two to Tango: Public-Private Collaboration Productive Development Policies, based on case studies of 25 productive development policies (PDPs) in five countries and discusses an additional example from Peru....

We study the macroeconomic effects of international trade policy by integrating a Hecksher-Ohlin trade model into an optimal-growth framework. The model predicts that a more open economy will have higher factor productivity. Furthermore, there is a "selective development trap" to which countries...