Understanding the Internationalization of Latin American Enterprises

Abstract

This paper purpose is to advance the understanding of Latin American multinationals internationalization. Using disaggregated data and differentiating the behavior between private-owned and state-owned multinational enterprises from nine Latin American countries, we analyze this matter at firm, industry and country level. We find that Latin American firms prefer to invest in the same region, nevertheless, the US appears like the most frequent country where these MNEs allocate its subsidiaries. We show that the research and development intensity level of the largest enterprises from Latin America is not high, that most of them are privately-owned and they are performing in a wide variety of industries.