Productive linkages policies: Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic review of literature

This study offers both a holistic and a specific view of the performance of the political tools of the productive linkages programs, their results, its status, and priorities, with the aim of strengthening this productive tool and remedying its shortcomings. Productive linkages programs are mechanisms of convergence between high competitiveness and innovation export companies and SMEs. The design of these programs seeks to improve the capabilities of domestic firms. Free Trade and Foreign Direct Investment in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, have stimulated and modernized the economy, the public administration and the society as a whole. However, they have also inserted dysfunctionality into their productive, economic, social, and territorial environment, creating contradictory situations. These imbalances point to the need for a holistic reframing of the model, through corrective public policies, such as the ones studied in this paper, in order to assess how they respond to the serious productive imbalance and foster the domestic capacities of SMEs. Commentary narrative overview of literature was the method used and all findings of literature have been retrieved from searches of computerized databases, hand searches, and authoritative texts.