The Lack of Local Large Corporations as an Important Explanation for the Low Level of Generation of Technology in Latin America

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to show that the great inducer of R&D in the world is the large company and this fact is an important issue for Latin American countries because this continent has a small number of really large companies. Despite representing approximately 8.5% of the world population, Latin America as a whole, corresponds to 1.2% of the total invested globally in Research and Technology. In other words in 2011 the world invested 1.4 trillion dollars and Latin America as a whole only 17 billion dollars. In other important countries these figures are invested mostly by large companiessuch as the USA that has 27% of the 500 largest companies in the world and is responsible for 33% of the world expenditure in R&D and has more than 50% of the total patents registered in USPTO- United State patent Trade Office.