Introduction: the emergence and evolution of business groups in Central America

Abstract

Central America as a region has made world headlines mainly due to civil wars, insurgencies, and, more recently, drug-trafficking and youth gang violence. Central American enterprises are only rarely studied; even less so are the Central American conglomerates and business groups that, albeit small by Latin American and global standards, play a significant role in the region’s economies. If they are studied at all, it is mainly as supporters of repressive dictatorships or corrupt regimes, or as the incarnation of colonizers and landholders, dominating the system that is considered to be the root cause of most of Central America’s problems. Bull, Benedicte; Castellacci, Fulvio; Kasahara, Yuri, Chapter 1: Introduction: the emergence and evolution of business groups in Central America , 2014, Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan'. This extract is taken from the author's original manuscript and has not been edited. The definitive, published, version of record is available here: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137359407