SMEs, violence and crisis: Stylized facts from a survey in Latin America

Kristian Hoelscher and Catalina G. Garcia

World Development, 2024, vol. 184, issue C

Abstract: Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can be uniquely vulnerable to exogenous shocks and crises. In many Latin American cities, SMEs also face endemic challenges related to urban violence that can inhibit their operations and survival. Drawing on theory related to how small business vulnerability and resilience is shaped by firm capacity, dynamics of violence and businesses’ networks and relationships, this article examines SMEs self-reported business outcomes in fragile urban contexts. We do so by utilising a novel primary survey of urban SME owners in Venezuela, El Salvador and Honduras conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results highlight how firms that were smaller, informal and faced increasing violence and extortion tended to suffer; while those that increased engagement with both the State and non-state criminal actors and those who supported their communities tended to fare better. While SMEs may face distinct liabilities in complex institutional settings, our findings suggest they can also exercise some agency in navigating urban violence and exogenous shocks by utilising both formal and informal support networks and fostering community linkages as resilience strategies.

Keywords: SMEs; Exogenous Shocks; COVID-19; Urban Violence; El Salvador; Honduras; Venezuela; Latin America (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X24001906
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:184:y:2024:i:c:s0305750x24001906

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106720

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().