Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article analyzes the Costa Rican students identified as “resilient” in the PISA 2009 evaluation; and compares them to their peers that, despite having similar socioeconomic background, obtained poorer results in this test. The article shows that differences in performance may be associated with the use of better reading comprehension strategies, personal interest in reading and the student's attitude towards school.

This article analizes the behaviour of non-performing loans in the financial system of Costa Rica from 1999 to 2010, in particular in state and private banks during the recent international crisis. Economic models are used to test for causality relationships between non-performing loans, the economic cycle and the financial cycle. It is concluded that the quality of credit assets in the financial sector of Costa Rica is affected by both the economic and the financial cycles. Furthermore, even though the effects of the recent financial crisis was similar on state and private banks, the latter adopt measures that reduce  accounting non-performing loans faster than their state owned counterpart.

This article is a result from a broader study on the patterns of concentration and evolution of the process of industrial localization and the labor market in the Great MetropolitanArea of Costa Rica (GAM). This study is part of the research program on regionaleconomics that the Institute of Research in Economic Sciences of the Universidad deCosta Rica (IICE) has been conducting since the year 2005. The article is aimed to showan approximation to the regional dynamics of employment in the GAM in the period 20002011.Inordertodothatwe appliedtheShift-Shareanalysisinitsclassicandspatiallymodifiedformulations.Thisallowsustodecomposeemploymentgrowthinfoureffects:thenationaleffect,thesectorialeffect,theregionaleffectandthe“locational”effect. 

Complex systems ruled by principles such as self-organization, interaction,interdependence, back-feeding, initial conditions sensitivity and continuous emergenceand adaptation, is a new theoretical approach, still not very used to analyze space issues ofproduction organization and/or market structure leading to clusters or firm’s networking. theoretical as well as methodological goodness of such complex systems, explaining how clusters emerge and their functioning patterns are here explored. According to theory, it turns out that is imperfect competition which gives rise to this kind of firm’s arrangements, and that it is increasing returns which make more attractive for enterprises to establish themselves nearby certain economic activity within a territory, ie, these special attributes are main gathering forces for clustering firms. determining whether clusters are complex systems of self-organizing space production pattern or not is addressed in this paper, ie, that imperfect competition lies under the process of clustering, which in turn is a complex, open and non-linear production organizing system evolving endogenously thorough changing and adapting processes, which at last, is the structuringaxis of the cluster.

This paper seeks to quantify the causal impact of the growth boundary in northern Heredia. Using the gradient of prices and a model of difference-in-differences, we estimatedthe differential in land value attributable to the impact of the regulation on the growthlimit for the 1997-2007 periods. This effect is manifested by a change in the slope of theprice gradient, indicating that the highest and the best use in the absence of regulation hasbeen restricted - which means that the regulation has been successful in reducing the levelof urban development in the protection zone.

the research process has as a result the creation of knowledge through solving a researchproblem. thus, research methodology refers to all the decisions that the researcher makesto achieve their research goals and deals with issues such as research design, the strategyto use, the study sample, the methods used to collect the information, techniques to beused in the analysis of information and the criteria to be used to increase the quality ofwork, among others. the current research designs revolve around two major paradigms:quantitative model and the qualitative model. this article reviews both perspectives andexplains when and why it is appropriate to use each one.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between total health expenditure, national income and population health status for a large sample of countries. We performed a descriptive, quantitative, ecological analysis based on data from 192 countries provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) for the years 2000 and 2009. The indicators used to measure health status are the life expectancy at birth and the infant mortality rate. While this study does not allow conclusions regarding the existence of causality, the statistical analysis performed suggest that there is a positive and stable relationship between health results, per capita health expenditure and per capita national income.

Costa Rica no sigue durante la primera década del siglo XXI la tendencia observada para la mayoría de los países de la región, que experimentan una reducción de la desigualdad en la distribución del ingreso familiar per cápita. Durante la primera mitad de esa década sí se produce una reducción en la desigualdad pero se revierte en el quinquenio siguiente. Para estudiar esos cambios se utiliza una desagregación de la desigualdad, medida por el coeficiente de Gini, por fuentes de ingreso, usando 12 fuentes distintas. Los resultados señalan que la reducción de la desigualdad en la primera mitad de la década, se da en un contexto de crecimiento económico pero estancamiento de los ingresos reales, que se concentra en los estratos de mayores ingresos. Esto implica que la reducción de la desigualdad se concentró en la reducción de los ingresos reales de las fuentes con mayor poder concentrador (elasticidades Gini ingreso mayor a la unidad y cambios marginales positivos), como lo son los ingresos laborales de los más calificados, las rentas del capital y las pensiones contributivas. En la segunda mitad de la década, el repunte de la desigualdad se produce por un aumento significativo de los ingresos reales de todas las fuentes, pero principalmente de las que tienen un impacto concentrador que no puede ser neutralizado por la expansión de las fuentes que reducen la desigualdad (ingresos laborales de los trabajadores no calificados y las transferencias estatales). Los resultados sugieren la necesidad de aplicar una política de salarios mínimos más activa, reforzar los programas de apoyo productivo para el sector informal, ampliar la oferta de trabajadores más calificados a través de la política educativa y ampliar las transferencias monetarias hacia los más pobres, lo que requiere de una reforma tributaria.

Las finanzas municipales en Costa Rica exhiben grandes variaciones temporales y espaciales. En algunos municipios, la serie de tiempo de ingresos tributarios per cápita se comporta como un proceso de caminata aleatoria. Otros municipios presentan series históricas estables. Las series históricas de ingresos tributarios municipales per cápita de todo Costa Rica (1998-2010) y por cantón (2005-2011) fueron clasificadas de acuerdo con el proceso que exhiben como estables en sus niveles o procesos de caminata aleatoria. Se encontró que, para el conjunto del país, los ingresos tributarios de los gobiernos locales han crecido; sin embargo, las series históricas de los distintos cantones no permiten determinar en forma significativa el parámetro de deriva, que describe el nivel de crecimiento, de cantones específicos. Análisis comparativos de las series nacionales con las series cantonales sugieren fuertemente que las grandes variaciones interanuales que se encuentran en cada cantón se compensan entre sí, de lo cual resulta una tendencia agregada hacia mayores ingresos.