“A Study of Small Neighborhood Tienditas in Central America”

We describe and benchmark tienditas (in-home convenience-like retail stores) and the tiendita business sector utilizing a large sample of 850 tienditas from Nicaragua and El Salvador. Three research questions concerning tiendita business dynamism, informality, and competitive scope shape our paper. Generally, we find that tienditas: 1) may range for subsistence to dynamic business enterprises primarily run by female micro-entrepreneurs, 2) typically skirt government oversight, and 3) fiercely compete within a monopolistically competitive business environment.