This paper focuses on SMEs from the Latin American region and aims to build on existing literature on the emergence of the institution-based view in combination with the resource-based view. We contribute to existing literature by extending the application of the aforementioned theories to firms in three under-researched countries in this region. Specifically, we contribute to the extant literature by providing empirical insights on how home country–specific resources and firm-specific resources can affect the internationalization speed of SMEs in Latin American region. In order to achieve our objectives, we empirically examine the role of economic freedom (EF), prior business/international experience, and firm size on speed of internationalization. We use a dataset of Latin American SMEs, employing Poisson and negative binomial (NB) regression techniques. Our data cover three main Latin American Pacific Rim economies—Chile, Colombia, and Peru—with similar economic specializations, geographical borders, and economic growth dynamics. We find that (1) some parts of Economic Freedom Index (EFI) accelerate the speed of internationalization, whereas other areas slow it down or have no effect. Specifically, the closer to full EF the home country is in terms of regulations and government, the shorter the time to internationalize. (2) More experienced management teams are more likely to translate their knowledge into faster international market entry, but this pays off only for larger sized SMEs in contrast to smaller ones due to complementarities between managerial resources and physical, financial, and organizational resources. (3) Finally, industry, firm location, and country destination can only weakly explain the speed of internationalization. The findings add to the literature on SME internationalization in emerging markets and point towards potential policies to stimulate growth by SMEs in these markets.

本文重点关注拉丁美洲地区的中小企业，旨在以现有文献为基础，结合基于机构的观点与基于资源的观点的出现。我们通过将上述理论的应用扩展到该地区三个研究不足的国家的公司，为现有文献做出贡献。具体而言，我们通过提供关于母国特定资源和公司特定资源如何影响拉丁美洲地区中小企业国际化速度的实证见解，为现有文献做出贡献。为了实现我们的目标，我们实证检验了经济自由 (EF)、先前的商业/国际经验和公司规模对国际化速度的影响。我们使用拉丁美洲中小企业的数据集，采用泊松和负二项式 (NB) 回归技术。我们的数据涵盖三个主要的拉丁美洲环太平洋经济体——智利、哥伦比亚和秘鲁——具有相似的经济专业化、地理边界和经济增长动态。我们发现（1）经济自由指数（EFI）的某些部分加快了国际化的速度，而其他方面则减缓或没有影响。具体来说，母国在法规和政府方面越接近完全 EF，国际化的时间就越短。(2) 更有经验的管理团队更有可能将他们的知识转化为更快地进入国际市场，但由于管理资源与物质、财务和组织资源之间的互补性，这仅对大型中小企业有利，而不是对小型中小企业。(3) 最后，产业、企业位置和国家目的地只能微弱地解释国际化的速度。调查结果补充了新兴市场中小企业国际化的文献，并指出了刺激这些市场中小企业增长的潜在政策。