Summer Jewels is a high-end quality jewellery SME based in Estonia, supplying the European market, and most recently, Latin America. Following their success in Latin America, the owner of Summer Jewels contacted the Helpdesk to learn what they needed to know before expanding into their next...

Summer Jewels is a high-end quality jewellery SME based in Estonia, supplying the European market, and most recently, Latin America. Following their success in Latin America, the owner of Summer Jewels contacted the Helpdesk to learn what they needed to know before expanding into their next...

Research about trade liberalization's impact on markups has focused on manufacturing due to data availability considerations. How do these effects vary across sectors? Which industries become more and less competitive as trade barriers are eliminated? We leverage firm-level tax records from the...

Research about trade liberalization's impact on markups has focused on manufacturing due to data availability considerations. How do these effects vary across sectors? Which industries become more and less competitive as trade barriers are eliminated? We leverage firm-level tax records from the...

Widespread market imperfections in agricultural value chains raise the possibility that regulatory interventions may enhance efficiency and farmers' welfare. We develop a structural model of agricultural value chains and estimate it using rich data from Costa Rica's coffee sector to evaluate...

Global service learning (GSL) sits at the interdisciplinary intersection of international development and study abroad, with visiting university students engaging in community development projects. Many GSL programs assert they contribute to the development of local communities, and promote...

Water is not only vital for human life but also is a critical economic input. Climate change will likely exacerbate conflicts over the multiple uses of water in Latin America. Adopting a south-south perspective approach, this study compares direct water requirement patterns over time among...

Costa Rica successfully completed its Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and Resilience and Sustainability (RSF) arrangements in June. Growth remains robust, inflation continues to converge to the central bank's target from below, and international reserves are ample. While one-off revenue shortfalls...

Recent developments and outlook. Growth accelerated to 5.1 percent in 2023 and is projected to remain robust at 4 percent in 2024. Inflation (year-on-year) has stayed negative since mid-2023, triggering Board Consultation under the Monetary Policy Consultation Clause. However, as base effects...

At the request of the Ministry of Finance, a mission from the International Monetary Fund visited San Jose. The purpose of the mission was to assess the proposal to a universal basic pension and to estimate its fiscal and welfare impact on the budget, on pension schemes, and on old age income...

Despite the economic importance of PRRS and its high prevalence in Costa Rica, there are no studies on the bioeconomic impact of the disease in the country or, even, in Central America. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate economic and production parameters of a PRRS-free...

Spanish AbstractEste artículo, basado en una investigación documental, traza tres objetivos: 1) comparar los niveles de corrupción registrados en Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala y México; 2) estudiar el comportamiento en estos países de otros factores asociados con una menor o mayor...

We apply the Gross City Development Index (GCD-Index) by Ruiz Estrada and Park (2019) in the case of San Jose, Costa Rica. The GCD-Index calculation is based on the concept of City integral sustainable development platform. The platform consists of ten main structures, which are (i) Main...

Costa Rica fue uno de los primeros países en la región de América Latina y el Caribe en elegir el instrumento de financiamiento Programa para Resultados (PforR) del Banco Mundial para respaldar la implementación de la Agenda Estratégica para el Fortalecimiento del Seguro de Salud por parte...

Costa Rica fue uno de los primeros países en la región de América Latina y el Caribe en elegir el instrumento de financiamiento Programa para Resultados (PforR) del Banco Mundial para respaldar la implementación de la Agenda Estratégica para el Fortalecimiento del Seguro de Salud por parte...

Este documento es una actualización del Diagnóstico Sistemático del País (DSP) de Costa Rica realizado por el Banco Mundial en 2015. El DSP es un producto analítico central del Banco Mundial y un insumo clave que sustenta el marco de alianza del Banco Mundial con los países clientes. Esta...

Costa Rica fue uno de los primeros países en la región de América Latina y el Caribe en elegir el instrumento de financiamiento Programa para Resultados (PforR) del Banco Mundial para respaldar la implementación de la Agenda Estratégica para el Fortalecimiento del Seguro de Salud por parte...

Costa Rica fue uno de los primeros países en la región de América Latina y el Caribe en elegir el instrumento de financiamiento Programa para Resultados (PforR) del Banco Mundial para respaldar la implementación de la Agenda Estratégica para el Fortalecimiento del Seguro de Salud por parte...

Costa Rica fue uno de los primeros países en la región de América Latina y el Caribe en elegir el instrumento de financiamiento Programa para Resultados (PforR) del Banco Mundial para respaldar la implementación de la Agenda Estratégica para el Fortalecimiento del Seguro de Salud por parte...

This urbanization review "Connecting the Greater Metropolitan Area of Costa Rica" focuses on the South Corridor, a lagging (sub)region within Costa Rica's Greater Metropolitan Area (Gran Area Metropolitana, GAM), and the challenges facing the subregion as a result of rapid and unplanned...

The aim of this report is to document the fidelity of the implementation of the RIPSS in the Huetar-Atlantica Region in Costa Rica. Implementation fidelity seeks to assess the extent to which an intervention is implemented as planned and, for this, the PIPs were contrasted with what was...

Adapting to climate change in vulnerable coffee regions is crucial to maintain rural livelihoods. Among the solutions, coffee breeding strategies aim to produce coffee varieties with higher output performance than traditional varieties while reducing competition for land. This paper investigates...

We estimate Costa Rica’s peace dividend following the end of the civil war and the army’s abolition in 1949 with synthetic control. The country’s average per capita GDP growth increased from 1.42% to 2.28% between 1950-2010, relative to a counterfactual Costa Rica that did not take this...

This Selected Issues paper focuses on the neutral interest rate in Costa Rica. Estimates of Costa Rica's real natural rate of interest are between 0 and 3 percent, with a suite of semistructural and univariate methods reaffirming this conclusion at close to 1 percent. This toolkit of multiple...

This paper discusses Costa Rica's 2023 Article IV Consultation, Fifth Review under the Extended Arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), Second Review under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF), and Request for Modification of Reform Measure. Costa Rica is reaping the...

This paper discusses Costa Rica's Fourth Review under the Extended Arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), First Review under the Resilience and Sustainability Arrangement, Request for Modification of Reform Measure under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF), and Monetary...

This technical assistance report on Costa Rica discusses the scoping mission on sovereign asset and liability management (SALM). A comprehensive SALM framework can have significant advantages over separate management of sovereign assets and liabilities. It allows analysis of the financial...

This technical assistance report on Costa Rica discusses upgrading the rule-based fiscal framework. A principles-based classification would allay political pressure for ad-hoc exclusions. The criteria should follow the statistical principles of the Government Finance Statistics Manual: entities...

In recent years, Costa Rica has experienced greater international migration from neighboring countries due to political, economic, and social reasons, raising discussions on the impact of migration on wages of native Costa Rican workers. This article is the first that disentangles the impact of...

Disjunctions in the fair trade movement -- Fair trade enclaves within neoliberalism -- The discourse of crisis -- Self-exploitation and co-ownership -- Research methods and positionality -- Producing bananas in Costa Rica -- Producing Alianza (and Caché) bananas -- Contracts -- Working hours...

This paper uses the gradual implementation of a primary health care intervention in Costa Rica to examine the long-term effect of primary health care on mortality. Nine years after opening a primary health care center, known as a Health Area, there was an associated 13 % reduction in...