ABSTRACT
Latin America is neither a homogeneous group of counties nor a mosaic of different political and cultural regions. Part of the economic and social evolution of Latin America has been determined by families involved in economic activities to exploit local or international opportunities. The author contextualizes the Regional Familiness Model in Latin America. The Regional Familiness Model attempts to understand the embeddedness of family firms in local productive structures by considering two levels through which family firms affect regional development and local economies: the micro-channel—firm productivity as a consequence of resource allocation and the macro-channel—regional productivity as a consequence of regional economic processes. Specifically, because family firms are locally embedded, thus creating historical, emotional, social, and economic relationships with their context, they may alter the depth and quality of the five proximity dimensions: geographical proximity, cognitive proximity, social proximity, organizational proximity, and institutional proximity.
