An absentee business owner is one who does not personally manage the business he owns, or who does not live in the community in which the business operates. Studies show that money spent locally re-circulates in the community three times as much as it does when it is spent with an absentee-owned business.[1] Local currency has been implemented in some communities as a countermeasure to this effect. Neighborhood investment, in which members of the community are give opportunities to become partial owners of new developments, is another method.[2] In Brazil, studies found that more than a third of the profits generated from tourism were exported to absentee business owners.[3] In Vietnam, the economic expansion of the 1990s was associated with a rise in absentee business owners.[4] There has also been concern that tourism profits in southern Africa go to absentee business owners.[5]
Absentee business owners can be more vulnerable to theft by employees,[6] especially when recordkeeping is turned over to employees, unless proper internal controls and review are implemented.[7] In the United States, many business-owning reservists have become absentee business owners during long tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.[8]