Latin America

Montevideo, Mexico City, São Paulo

HBS has had a longstanding footprint in Latin America for over 20 years. The Latin America Research Center (LARC) opened in 2000 to satisfy strong interest on the part of the HBS faculty in this dynamic region. As a result, the LARC’s work has greatly increased the volume of in-depth research and course materials that focus on business management issues specific to Latin American companies. This has also enabled HBS to strengthen its relationships with important companies and organizations, fostering increased student engagement in the region. Since its inception, the LARC has supported HBS faculty in developing most of the HBS research cases and projects on management and economic issues in Latin America. To further encourage research being carried out in this region, HBS established a research center in São Paulo, Brazil, coupled with an office in Mexico City.

Locations

Latin America Research Center - Montevideo
Av. Italia 6201
Edificio Los Robles, Planta Baja
Parque Tecnológico del LATU
11500, Montevideo
Uruguay

Mexico City Office
Mexico City, Mexico

Latin America Research Center - São Paulo
São Paulo, Brazil
Tel: +55 11 3549 9590

News & Highlights

MAY 2023
COMPANY VISIT

Professor Michael Chu Meets with Ceibal

Professors Michael Chu and John Kim co-authored a case in 2022 about Ceibal, an organization within the Ministry of Education of Uruguay, devoted to educational innovation. In May 2023, Professor Chu visited Ceibal and held a stimulating case discussion with Ceibal's management, encouraging them to pursue their mission and be a key factor to leverage the country's opportunities in the global context.

APRIL 2023
ALUMNI EVENT

Professor Christina Wing's Visit to Brazil

In April, Professor Christina Wing traveled to Brazil to develop a case study on a family business. She also seized the opportunity to meet with OPM participants. Additionally, as part of her trip, the Latin America Research Center and Young Presidents' Organization collaborated to organize a breakfast meeting with young leaders. The purpose of this gathering was to explore strategies for effectively preparing companies for the challenges and opportunities of the next generation.

JULY 2022
EVENT

Conversation with Professor Michael Chu and Marcelo Escobar

In July, Professor Michael Chu and Marcelo Escobar, president of Banco Sol in Bolivia, talked to entrepreneurs in Santa Cruz de la Sierra about the impact of technology in financial services. Escobar leveraged his extensive experience in Latin America, venture capital, and base of pyramid markets.

June 2022
EVENT

A Conversation with Professor Michael Chu and Professor John Kim

In Montevideo, Uruguay, in June 2022, a group of alumni and business leaders gathered with Professors Michael Chu and John Kim to talk about the importance of education as a driver for growth and human development in the world and the current and future challenges and opportunities of the educational systems globally and specifically in Uruguay.

JUNE 2022
EVENTS

Co-hosted Event with HBS Club of Brazil: Innovation on Boards

In June 2022, Celso Ienaga, Claudia Elisa, Michel Abadi and Renato Cunha (MBA’15) talked about the importance of innovation in boards of directors, how to measure innovation impact, and changes that generates growth opportunities (i.e. the Covid-19 pandemic). More than 70 alumni and friends attended the event.

New Research on the Region

2022
Working Paper

Turning Away From the State: Trade Shocks and Informal Insurance in Brazil

By: Paula Rettl

How does economic globalization affect vote choices? Conventional wisdom holds that voters who lose from economic integration support parties that propose to expand the welfare state. I argue that a key scope condition of this causal relationship is expectations about the state. In the global south, non-state organizations (such as churches and gangs) are often more credible providers of insurance than the state. In these contexts, globalization increases the effectiveness of "organizational brokers" in persuading local communities. To test this argument, I propose a new shift-share instrument that measures the exposure of Brazilian local labor markets to an exogenous decline in exports. By matching this instrument with electoral and survey data, I provide evidence that declining exports increased the power of Evangelical leaders to persuade their congregations to vote against parties that favor welfare-state expansion. My findings explain and describe the contingencies underlying the political consequences of globalization.

August 2023
Case

Beyond the Barricades: Chile 2023

By: Debora L. Spar, Willis Emmons, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Ruth Costas

Chile, often considered among Latin America´s greatest economic success stories, suffered a shocking wave of protests in October 2019, as its citizens demanded reforms across healthcare and education systems, and protested inequality and rising costs of living. As Chileans and outside observers reviewed the situation, many reflected on the country’s long history of inequality as the underlying source for public frustration. Chile´s inequality had declined since the late 1990s, largely due to previous governments’ commitment to free market policies and economic growth. The country benefitted from a robust business sector that was open to international trade, and from a large and thriving middle class. Yet, Chileans were clearly angry, and their outrage now threatened to ruin the country’s robust economy and political stability. Meanwhile, a growing number of observers became concerned and inspected the role that Chile’s business sector had played in the country’s successes and failures. Although business drove growth, it was also the sector that had escaped the troubles that beset so many other parts of the country. Moreover, Chile´s economic performance in 2022 was lackluster. What had gone amiss with one of Latin America’s most successful economies? And who had the power, and responsibility, to make changes?

June 2023
Teaching Material

Roche: ESG and Access to Healthcare

By: George Serafeim

In May 2022, Roche Group, one of the largest healthcare companies in the world, hosted its first ESG investor event focused exclusively on its efforts to impact access to healthcare. While Roche had recently set an ambitious goal to double the number of patients that had access to its innovative medicines and diagnostic solutions within ten years, it was not at all clear how the firm should structure its resource allocation criteria, performance evaluations, reporting and incentive systems to align efforts internally toward these goals. Group CFO and CIO Alan Hippe was presented with two options, none of which he was particularly enthusiastic about. One was to lower the hurdle rate for projects related to ESG issues, thus relaxing profit expectations. The alternative was to incorporate a set of minimum ESG requirements in all of Roche’s new project proposals. In this case, however, the risk was to reduce the focus on ESG from a strategic priority to a compliance exercise. In the presentation shared with investors at the ESG event, access to healthcare had been positioned as Roche’s greatest contribution to society. This type of public commitment required more than a compliance-level of effort. In September, Alan Hippe would sit down with the executive committee to chart a path for integrating ESG issues into Roche’s project selection and business planning. Hippe went on to define three objectives for ESG at Roche, “we need to align on targets, we need to get resource allocation right, and we need to report both internally and externally.”

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