Download or read book The Long Shadow of Informality written by Franziska Ohnsorge and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2022-02-09 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A large percentage of workers and firms operate in the informal economy, outside the line of sight of governments in emerging market and developing economies. This may hold back the recovery in these economies from the deep recessions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--unless governments adopt a broad set of policies to address the challenges of widespread informality. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of informality and its implications for a durable economic recovery and for long-term development. It finds that pervasive informality is associated with significantly weaker economic outcomes--including lower government resources to combat recessions, lower per capita incomes, greater poverty, less financial development, and weaker investment and productivity.
Download or read book Economic Informality written by Ana Maria Oviedo and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This survey assembles recent theoretical and empirical advances in the literature on economic informality and analyzes the causes and costs of informality in developed and developing economies. Using recent evidence, the survey discusses the nature and roots of informal economic activity across countries, distinguishing between informality as the result of exclusion and exit. The survey provides an extensive review of recent international experience with policies aimed at reducing informality, in particular, policies that facilitate the formalization process, create a framework for the transition from informality to formality, lend support to newly created firms, reduce or eliminate inconsistencies across regulation and government agencies, increase information flows, and increase enforcement.
Download or read book The Global Informal Workforce written by International Monetary Fund and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-07-23 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Global Informal Workforce is a fresh look at the informal economy around the world and its impact on the macroeconomy. The book covers interactions between the informal economy, labor and product markets, gender equality, fiscal institutions and outcomes, social protection, and financial inclusion. Informality is a widespread and persistent phenomenon that affects how fast economies can grow, develop, and provide decent economic opportunities for their populations. The COVID-19 pandemic has helped to uncover the vulnerabilities of the informal workforce.
Download or read book The Informal Economy Revisited written by Martha Chen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark volume brings together leading scholars in the field to investigate recent conceptual shifts, research findings and policy debates on the informal economy as well as future challenges and directions for research and policy. Well over half of the global workforce and the vast majority of the workforce in developing countries work in the informal economy, and in countries around the world new forms of informal employment are emerging. Yet the informal workforce is not well understood, remains undervalued and is widely stigmatised. Contributors to the volume bridge a range of disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, development economics, law, political science, social policy, sociology, statistics, urban planning and design. The Informal Economy Revisited also focuses on specific groups of informal workers, including home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers, to provide a grounded insight into disciplinary debates. Ultimately, the book calls for a paradigm shift in how the informal economy is perceived to reflect the realities of informal work in the Global South, as well as the informal practices of the state and capital, not just labour. The Informal Economy Revisited is the culmination of 20 years of pioneering work by WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing), a global network of researchers, development practitioners and organisations of informal workers in 90 countries. Researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and advocates will all find this book an invaluable guide to the significance and complexities of the informal economy, and its role in today’s globalised economy. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429200724, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license
Download or read book The Informal Economy written by Ceyhun Elgin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-30 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Informal Economy: Measures, Causes, and Consequences provides a comprehensive account of the economics of informality through the lenses of various economic perspectives. Although informal economic activity is widespread all around the world, many issues around its nature and consequences remain largely under-explored or unresolved. Most importantly, the evidence presented in the existing literature on informality has failed to generate a consensus on the measurements, causes, and effects of the informal sector among researchers. Most, if not all, of the empirical results are inconclusive or dependent on the nature of the dataset used in the analysis. This book aims to address that gap by exploring different definitions and measures of the informal economy, including different perspectives, then subjecting these measures to a battery of empirical tests to examine the determinants and effects of informality. Through this analysis and an extensive review of the literature, the book explores many of the economic, political, and social factors of the informal economy including the relationship between informality and the tax burden, tax enforcement, and institutional quality. This key text makes for compulsive reading to scholars and students interested in the informal or shadow economy.
Download or read book Understanding the Determinants of Economic Informality in Paraguay written by Michael J. Pisani and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-08-21 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For several years, the government of Paraguay has sought to address the issue of informality, both as a response to poverty reduction and a means to expand its tax base. While effort has been undertaken to describe informality, the government lacks the capacity and perhaps the will to analyze the phenomenon through a robust empirical lens. Hence, little is known about the informal economy beyond anecdotes, personal interactions, and description. This book is the first to comprehensively, rigorously, and empirically study the determinants of informality in Paraguay. This book is of vital interest to those studying the Paraguayan economy, development economics, Latin American economics, and informality.
Download or read book The Informal Economy written by Ioana Horodnic and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During much of the twentieth century, informal employment and entrepreneurship was commonly depicted as a residue from a previous era. Its continuing presence was seen to be a sign of "backwardness" whilst the formal economy represented "progress". In recent decades, however, numerous studies have revealed not only that informal employment is extensive and persistent but also that it is growing relative to formal employment in many populations. Whilst in the developing world, the informal economy is often found to be the mainstream economy, nevertheless, in the developed world too, informality is currently still estimated to account for notable per cent of GDP. The Informal Economy: Exploring Drivers and Practices intends to engage with these issues, providing a much-need ‘contextualised’ approach to explain the persistence and growth of forms of informal economic practices and entrepreneurial activities in the twenty-first century. Using a diverse range of empirical case studies from Europe, Africa, North Africa and Asia, this book unpacks the different varieties of forms of informal work and entrepreneurship and provides a critical analysis of existing theorisations used to explain such phenomena. This book’s aim is to examine the nature and persistence of informal work and entrepreneurship, across a variety of empirical settings, from within the developed world, the developing world and within transformation economies within post-socialist spaces. Given its worldwide, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach and recent interest in the informal economies by a number of disciplines and organisations, this book will be of vital reading to those operating in the fields of: Economics, political economy and management, Human and economic geography and Economic anthropology and sociology as well as development studies
Download or read book The Informal Economy in Developing Countries written by Jean-Pierre Cling and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-21 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Informality is ubiquitous in most developing countries. Understanding the informal economy is therefore of utmost importance from a political, economic and social point of view. Paradoxically, despite its economic importance, knowledge is extremely limited regarding the informal economy. It remains largely unrecognized by researchers, is neglected by politicians, and is even negatively perceived as it is meant to disappear with development. This book aims to amend this situation by presenting recent high level research which studies the informal sector and informal employment. Fresh research into this subject is presented through empirical analysis which covers Asia, Africa and Latin America. Each chapter relies on data and a detailed knowledge of the context of the countries studied in order to question the dominant schools of thought on the origins and causes of informality. The results provide interesting insights into the constraints faced by informal workers, the dynamics of the informal economy and its link with poverty issues. On the basis of the evidences provided by results adequate policies could be defined to address informality issues. The principal characteristics of the informal sector testify to some profound similarities between developing countries: low qualifications and the precariousness of jobs, mediocre incomes and working conditions, atomization of production units and lack of articulation with the formal economy, etc. This general statement does not contradict the observation that there is a high level of heterogeneity in the sector and in informal employment within each country, confirmed by several chapters in this work. In the absence of a sufficient number of job creations, the informal sector essentially constitutes a refuge for workers seeking and is here to stay in the short and medium term, even in emerging countries.
Download or read book The Informal Economy in Developing Nations written by Erika Kraemer-Mbula and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-20 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering study offers a conceptual model and rich empirical evidence to help researchers and policy-makers understand informal innovation in developing countries.
Download or read book Linking the Formal and Informal Economy written by Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2006-09-21 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of studies on formality and informality in developing countries, this volume contains contributions from anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and political scientists. It argues for moving beyond the formal-informal dichotomy, and offers information to develop guiding principles for intervention.
Download or read book Public Sector Debt Statistics written by International Monetary Fund and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2011-12-08 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global financial crisis of recent years and the associated large fiscal deficits and debt levels that have impacted many countries underscores the importance of reliable and timely government statistics and, more broadly, public sector debt as a critical element in countries fiscal and external sustainability. Public Sector Debt Statistics is the first international guide of its kind, and its primary objectives are to improve the quality and timeliness of key debt statistics and promote a convergence of recording practices to foster international comparability and as a reference for national compilers and users for compiling and disseminating these data. Like other statistical guides published by the IMF, this one was prepared in consultation with countries and international agencies, including the nine organizations of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Finance Statistics (TFFS). The guide's preparation was based on the broad range of experience of our institutions and benefitted from consultation with national compilers of government finance and public sector debt statistics. The guide's concepts are harmonized with those of the System of National Accounts (2008) and the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual, Sixth Edition.
Download or read book Workers and the Global Informal Economy written by Supriya Routh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global financial crisis and subsequent increase in social inequality has led in many cases to a redrawing of the boundaries between formal and informal work. This interdisciplinary volume explores the role of informal work in today’s global economy, presenting economic, legal, sociological, historical, anthropological, political and cultural perspectives on the topic. Workers and the Global Informal Economy explores varying definitions of informality in the backdrop of neo-liberal market logic, exploring how it manifests itself in different regions around the world, and its relationship with formal work. This volume demonstrates how neo-liberalism has been instrumental in accelerating informality and has resulted in the increasingly precarious position of the informal worker. Using different methodological approaches and regional focuses, this book considers key questions such as whether workers exercise choice over their work; how constrained such choices are; how social norms shape such choices; how work affects their well-being and agency; and what role culture plays in the determination of informality. This interdisciplinary collection will be of interest to policy-makers and researchers engaging with informality from different disciplinary and regional perspectives.
Download or read book Informality Trends and Cycles written by Norman Loayza and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2006 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper studies the trends and cycles of informal employment. It first presents a theoretical model where the size of informal employment is determined by the relative costs and benefits of informality and the distribution of workers' skills. In the long run, informal employment varies with the trends in these variables, and in the short run it reacts to accommodate transient shocks and to close the gap that separates it from its trend level. The paper then uses an error-correction framework to examine empirically informality's long- and short-run relationships. For this purpose, it uses country-level data at annual frequency for a sample of industrial and developing countries, with the share of self-employment in the labor force as the proxy for informal employment. The paper finds that, in the long run, informality is larger in countries that have lower GDP per capita and impose more costs to formal firms in the form of more rigid business regulations, less valuable police and judicial services, and weaker monitoring of informality. In the short run, informal employment is found to be counter-cyclical for the majority of countries, with the degree of counter-cyclicality being lower in countries with larger informal employment and better police and judicial services. Moreover, informal employment follows a stable, trend-reverting process. These results are robust to changes in the sample and to the influence of outliers, even when only developing countries are considered in the analysis.
Download or read book Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa written by Mary Njeri Kinyanjui and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2014-06-12 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly original work, Mary Njeri Kinyanjui explores the trajectory of women's movement from the margins of urbanization into the centres of business activities in Nairobi and its accompanying implications for urban planning. While women in much of Africa have struggled to gain urban citizenship and continue to be weighed down by poor education, low income and confinement to domestic responsibilities due to patriarchic norms, a new form of urban dynamism - partly informed by the informal economy - is now enabling them to manage poverty, create jobs and link to the circuits of capital and labour. Relying on social ties, reciprocity, sharing and collaboration, women's informal 'solidarity entrepreneurialism' is taking them away from the margins of business activity and catapulting them into the centre. Bringing together key issues of gender, economic informality and urban planning in Africa, Kinyanjui demonstrates that women have become a critical factor in the making of a postcolonial city.
Download or read book The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality Volume 1 written by Alena Ledeneva and published by Saint Philip Street Press. This book was released on 2020-10-09 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alena Ledeneva invites you on a voyage of discovery, to explore society's open secrets, unwritten rules and know-how practices. Broadly defined as 'ways of getting things done', these invisible yet powerful informal practices tend to escape articulation in official discourse. They include emotion-driven exchanges of gifts or favours and tributes for services, interest-driven know-how (from informal welfare to informal employment and entrepreneurship), identity-driven practices of solidarity, and power-driven forms of co-optation and control. The paradox, or not, of the invisibility of these informal practices is their ubiquity. Expertly practised by insiders but often hidden from outsiders, informal practices are, as this book shows, deeply rooted all over the world, yet underestimated in policy. Entries from the five continents presented in this volume are samples of the truly global and ever-growing collection, made possible by a remarkable collaboration of over 200 scholars across disciplines and area studies. By mapping the grey zones, blurred boundaries, types of ambivalence and contexts of complexity, this book creates the first Global Map of Informality. The accompanying database is searchable by region, keyword or type of practice, so do explore what works, how, where and why! This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.
Download or read book Informality written by Guillermo Perry and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes informality in Latin America, exploring root causes and reasons for and implications of its growth. This book uses two distinct but complementary lenses. It concludes that reducing informality levels and overcoming the "culture of informality" will require actions to increase aggregate productivity in the economy.
Download or read book The Informal Economy in Sub Saharan Africa written by Leandro Medina and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The multiple indicator-multiple cause (MIMIC) method is a well-established tool for measuring informal economic activity. However, it has been criticized because GDP is used both as a cause and indicator variable. To address this issue, this paper applies for the first time the light intensity approach (instead of GDP). It also uses the Predictive Mean Matching (PMM) method to estimate the size of the informal economy for Sub-Saharan African countries over 24 years. Results suggest that informal economy in Sub-Saharan Africa remains among the largest in the world, although this share has been very gradually declining. It also finds significant heterogeneity, with informality ranging from a low of 20 to 25 percent in Mauritius, South Africa and Namibia to a high of 50 to 65 percent in Benin, Tanzania and Nigeria.
