查看文章

In the early 1980s Costa Rica abandoned a development strategy based on industrialization via import substitution and embarked in a development strategy of export promotion, liberalization and openness to international markets. For several years, the country undertook a gradual but sustained process of reform and liberalization which 25 years later has changed drastically the structure of production and international trade of the country. As a result, the country shifted its exports from coffee and bananas to developed countries and manufactures to Central America to exports of a diversified set of goods sent to an equally diversified set of trade partners. Most remarkably, in the last years the country has been able to attract an important set of high technology multinational firms. In this paper I argue that the rather fast and stunning transformation of the Costa Rican economy was enabled by the initially high endowment of skills of the country. This high endowment of skills resulted from a very long tradition of emphasizing education and is also singled out as the main attraction of high technology firms. However, I argue that the country has failed to properly prepare the labor force for ensuing skills requirement. The top-down industrial and trade policies have not been complemented with a complementary bottom-up strategy for skill formation. As a result, Costa Rica today exhibits shortages of critical skills and these shortages are prompt to interrupt the catching up of the country with developed countries. Alarmingly, the education and training institutions of the country are not showing signs of being correcting these problems.