Eslava, Marcela;
Melendez, Marcela;
Ulyssea, Gabriel;
Urdaneta, Nicolas;
Flores, Ignacio;
(2025)
Businesses and inequality in Latin America.
Oxford Open Economics
, 4
(1)
i334-i3348.
10.1093/ooec/odae031.
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Abstract
The relationship between businesses and inequality has been a focus of recent attention globally. This chapter summarizes basic facts about this relationship in Latin America (LATAM). Unlike advanced economies where superstar firm growth has prompted concerns over disproportionate income growth at the top, the facts we summarize illustrate that the main concern for LATAM is the extreme prevalence of tiny businesses whose workers and owners tend to populate the bottom income segments. The empirical likelihood that these businesses improve their productivity and grow to hire more workers and pay better wages is also very low. The region displays a deficit of employment generation in small and medium enterprises, by contrast to both micro businesses (including self-employment) and large corporations. While the former tend to remunerate both workers and owners with very low incomes, the latter pay high wages but exhibit low labor shares.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Businesses and inequality in Latin America |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/ooec/odae031 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/ooec/odae031 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Economics |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10200435 |
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