Download or read book The economics of the informal sector a simple model and some empirical evidence from Latin America written by Norman A. Loayza and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1997 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Economics of the Informal Sector written by Loayza and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Economics of the Informal Sector written by Norman Loayza and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: February 1997 An increase in the size of the informal sector hurts growth by reducing the availability for public services for everyone in the economy and increasing the number of activities that use some existing public services less efficiently or not at all. Loayza presents the view that informal economies arise when governments impose excessive taxes and regulations that they are unable to enforce. Loayza studies the determinants and effects of the informal sector using an endogenous growth model whose production technology depends essentially on congestable public services. In this model, changes (in both policy parameters and the quality of government institutions) that promote an increase in the relative size of the informal economy will also generate a reduction in the rate of economic growth. Using data from Latin American countries in the early 1990s, Loayza tests some of the model's implications and estimates the size of the informal sector in these countries - identifying the size of the informal sector to latent variable for which multiple causes and indicators exist. The results suggest that: * The size of the informal sector depends positively on proxies for tax burden and restrictions on the labor market. * It depends negatively on a proxy for the quality of government institutions. * An increase in the size of the informal sector hurts growth by reducing the availability of public services for everyone in the economy and by increasing the number of activities that use some existing public services less efficiently or not at all. This paper - a product of the Macroeconomics and Growth Division, Policy Research Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to examine the determinants of economic growth.
Download or read book The Economics of the Informal Sector written by Norman Loayza and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An increase in the size of the informal sector hurts growth by reducing the availability for public services for everyone in the economy and increasing the number of activities that use some existing public services less efficiently or not at all.Loayza presents the view that informal economies arise when governments impose excessive taxes and regulations that they are unable to enforce. Loayza studies the determinants and effects of the informal sector using an endogenous growth model whose production technology depends essentially on congestable public services. In this model, changes (in both policy parameters and the quality of government institutions) that promote an increase in the relative size of the informal economy will also generate a reduction in the rate of economic growth.Using data from Latin American countries in the early 1990s, Loayza tests some of the model's implications and estimates the size of the informal sector in these countries - identifying the size of the informal sector to latent variable for which multiple causes and indicators exist. The results suggest that:The size of the informal sector depends positively on proxies for tax burden and restrictions on the labor market.It depends negatively on a proxy for the quality of government institutions.An increase in the size of the informal sector hurts growth by reducing the availability of public services for everyone in the economy and by increasing the number of activities that use some existing public services less efficiently or not at all.This paper - a product of the Macroeconomics and Growth Division, Policy Research Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to examine the determinants of economic growth.
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 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.
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 The Shadow Economy written by Friedrich Schneider and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents new data to give an overview of shadow economies from OECD countries and propose solutions to prevent illicit work.
Download or read book Revisiting the Informal Sector written by Sarbajit Chaudhuri and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides insight into the diverse aspects of the informal sector, its role in the context of unemployment, child labor, globalization and environment, as well as its multi-faceted interaction with the other sectors of the economy.
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 Economic Informality written by Ana Maria Oviedo and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 54 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 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 The Informal Sector and Economic Development in Latin America written by Jordan Lee and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major hindrance to the achievement of steady economic growth is widespread informal employment, also known as the informal sector. The informal sector is a complex phenomenon which is pervasive in developing regions of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and Latin America. It was my personal encounter with the informal sector while traveling through Peru in September of 2008 as a college student studying abroad that inspired me to further investigate this phenomenon. In this paper I will define what the informal sector is, the types of work performed within it, and how it came into existence. After a basic overview of the informal sector, the social problems and unproductiveness that widespread informal economic activity brings to a nation will be evident. The Chilean model for economic success is one that struggling Latin American economies can emulate, and this argument is well-supported after comparing data on Bolivia, Peru, and Chile and referring to various scholars who have researched the informal sector. Upon review of the economic and human development data and after exploring Chile's historical successes and controversies (the reign of terror under Augusto Pinochet) we have gathered that institutions are the key to seeing economic development take place. Creating an atmosphere which honors the rule of law, democracy, and private property will transform countries that have been plagued by poverty for decades. Constructing a framework favorable to economic productivity will allow the development process to take its course. Once development takes place, the informal sector will gradually diminish.
Download or read book Law and Employment written by James J. Heckman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Law and Employment analyzes the effects of regulation and deregulation on Latin American labor markets and presents empirically grounded studies of the costs of regulation. Numerous labor regulations that were introduced or reformed in Latin America in the past thirty years have had important economic consequences. Nobel Prize-winning economist James J. Heckman and Carmen Pagés document the behavior of firms attempting to stay in business and be competitive while facing the high costs of complying with these labor laws. They challenge the prevailing view that labor market regulations affect only the distribution of labor incomes and have little or no impact on efficiency or the performance of labor markets. Using new micro-evidence, this volume shows that labor regulations reduce labor market turnover rates and flexibility, promote inequality, and discriminate against marginal workers. Along with in-depth studies of Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Jamaica, and Trinidad, Law and Employment provides comparative analysis of Latin American economies against a range of European countries and the United States. The book breaks new ground by quantifying not only the cost of regulation in Latin America, the Caribbean, and in the OECD, but also the broader impact of this regulation.
Download or read book Shadow Economies Around the World What Did We Learn Over the Last 20 Years written by Leandro Medina and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We undertake an extended discussion of the latest developments about the existing and new estimation methods of the shadow economy. New results on the shadow economy for 158 countries all over the world are presented over 1991 to 2015. Strengths and weaknesses of these methods are assessed and a critical comparison and evaluation of the methods is carried out. The average size of the shadow economy of the 158 countries over 1991 to 2015 is 31.9 percent. The largest ones are Zimbabwe with 60.6 percent, and Bolivia with 62.3 percent of GDP. The lowest ones are Austria with 8.9 percent, and Switzerland with 7.2 percent. The new methods, especially the new macro method, Currency Demand Approach (CDA) and Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) in a structured hybrid-model based estimation procedure, are promising approaches from an econometric standpoint, alongside some new micro estimates. These estimations come quite close to others used by statistical offices or based on surveys.
Download or read book The Informal Sector written by Aureo de Paula and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We test implications of a simple equilibrium model of informality using a survey of 48,000 small firms in Brazil. In the model, agent's ability to manage production differ and informal firms face a higher cost of capital and limitation on size, although these informal firms avoid tax payments. As a result, informal firms are managed by less able entrepreneurs, are smaller, and employ a lower capital-labor ratio. The model predicts that the interaction of an index of observable inputs to entrepreneurial ability and formality is positively correlated with firm size, which we verify in the data. Using the model, we estimate that informal firms in our data-set faced at least 1.3 times the cost of capital of formal firms.
Download or read book The Informal Sector written by Aureo de Paula and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We test implications of a simple equilibrium model of informality using a survey of 48,000 small firms in Brazil. In the model, agent's ability to manage production differ and informal firms face a higher cost of capital and limitation on size, although these informal firms avoid tax payments. As a result, informal firms are managed by less able entrepreneurs, are smaller and employ a lower capital-labor ratio. When education is an imperfect proxy for ability, the model predicts that the interaction of the manager's education and formality is positively correlated with firm size. Using the model, we estimate that informal firms in our dataset faced at least 1.3 times the cost of capital of formal firms.
