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 236 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Stealth of Nations written by Robert Neuwirth and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eye-opening account of the informal economy around the globe, Stealth of Nations traces the history and reach of unregulated markets, and explains the unwritten rules that govern them. Journalist Robert Neuwirth joins globe-trotting Nigerians who sell Chinese cell phones and laid-off San Franciscans who use Twitter to market street food and learns that the people who work in informal economies are entrepreneurs who provide essential services and crucial employment. Dubbing this little-recognized business arena with a new name—”System D”—Neuwirth points out that it accounts for a growing amount of trade, and that, united in a single nation, it would be the world’s second-largest economy, trailing only the United States in financial might. Stealth of Nations offers an inside look at the thriving world of unfettered trade and finds far more than a chaotic emporium of dubious pirated goods.

Download or read book Work Without Protections written by Gregory K. Schoepfle and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Entrepreneurship in the Informal Sector written by Colin C. Williams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How many businesses start-ups conduct some or all of their trade ‘off-the-books’? And how many enterprises continue to do some of their work off-the-books once they are more established? What should be done about them? Should governments adopt ever more punitive measures to eradicate them? Or should we recognise this hidden enterprise culture and attempt to harness it? If so, how can this be done? What measures can be taken to ensure that businesses start-up in a proper manner? And what can be done to help those enterprises and entrepreneurs currently working off-the-books to legitimise their businesses? The aim of this book is to advance a new way of answering these questions. Drawing inspiration from institutional theory, informal sector entrepreneurship is explained as resulting from the asymmetry between the codified laws and regulations of a society’s formal institutions and the norms, values and beliefs that comprise a society’s informal institutions. The argument is that if the norms, values and beliefs of entrepreneurs (i.e., their individual morality) were wholly aligned with the codified laws and regulations (i.e., state morality), there would be no informal sector entrepreneurship. However, because the individual morality of entrepreneurs differs from state morality, such as due to their lack of trust in government and the rule of law, the result is the prevalence of informal sector entrepreneurship. The greater the degree of institutional asymmetry, the higher is the propensity to engage in informal sector entrepreneurship. This book provides evidence to show that this is the case both at the individual- and country-level and then discusses how this can be overcome. .

Download or read book Contrapunto written by Cathy A. Rakowski and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1994-07-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The informal sector denotes the small-scale, unprotected, and loosely regulated activities and self-employment that proliferate in developing countries. This book is about the people who engage in informal activities and the people who study, interpret, intervene in, promote, or attempt to repress or regulate the sector. The authors bring together and evaluate for the first time competing theories, policies, and research findings on the informal sector, dealing with issues of power, ideology, and politics; basic research, applied research, program evaluation, and policymaking; exploitation, entrepreneurship, and opportunity; and poverty and the accumulation of wealth.

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: The informal economy represents a significant share of output and employment in many developing countries. Yet little is known about this hidden engine of innovation. This pioneering study addresses some crucial questions, including: what is the role of the informal sector in economic development? How does innovation occur in the informal economy? How does it spread, who are the key actors and what impacts does it have? How do inventors and entrepreneurs in the informal economy reap benefits from their innovations? What stops informal sector innovation from scaling up? How can informal sector innovation in developing countries be measured? And what policies might support informal sector innovation and improve its impacts? This book will stimulate further work on this crucial but under-researched subject. As well as rich empirical evidence from several groundbreaking studies, it includes conceptual and methodological tools and policy recommendations to help researchers and policy-makers understand innovation in the informal economy.

Download or read book On Defining and Measuring the Informal Sector written by Andrew Henley and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2006 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A range of alternative empirical definitions of informal activity have been employed in the literature. Choice of definition is often dictated by data availability. Different definitions may imply very different conceptual understandings of informality. In this paper the authors investigate the degree of congruence between three definitions of informality based on employment contract registration, social security protection, and the characteristics of the employer and employment using Brazilian household survey data for the period 1992 to 2001. The authors present evidence showing that 64 percent of the economically active population are informal according to at least one definition, but only 40 percent are informal according to all three. Steady compositional changes have been taking place among informal workers, conditional on definition.

Download or read book Linking the Formal and Informal Economy written by Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. 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 Good Jobs Bad Jobs No Jobs written by Tony Avirgan and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Liberalization and Economic Performance of the Informal Sector written by Indrajit Bairagya and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Impact of liberalization on informality has been a subject of intense debate for many years and the major issue that has come up is whether liberalization helps to grow informal sector and informality in the economy or it is an obstruction for informal sector’s growth. Thus, in the light of the recent liberalization measure, this book sets to examine general presumptions of the development of informal sector in the context of the Indian economy. The book begins with a broad framework for analysis of output contribution and growth of the informal sector. Liberalization is measured by openness indices and inter-sectoral linkages. Impact of liberalization on growth contributions of informal sector is captured by openness indices (i.e. degree of openness to trade and principal component scores), technical efficiency (measured by Data Envelope Analysis and estimated by Tobit Censored Regression model) and components of productivity (computed by Malmquist total factor productivity index) of the informal enterprises by inter-sectoral linkages. The linkages are modeled theoretically in a neo-classical growth theory and empirically measured by sub-contracting arrangements between formal and informal enterprises. In addition, the book also provides implications on promotion of informal sector from the viewpoint of employment generation. The description and analyses of the book will help with policy implications and enlighten the readers on the development of informal sector.