Explaining the Prevalence of Illegitimate Wage Practices in Southern Europe: An Institutional Analysis

COVID-19 and undeclared work: impacts and policy responses in Europe

“…Secondly, there are those in under-declared employment, who are in declared employment but receive an official declared wage (often set at the minimum wage) and the rest of their salary as an undeclared 'envelope wage'. In 2013, one in 33 formal employees in the EU28 received envelope wages, and the median proportion of their gross salary paid as an envelope wage was 25% (Williams & Horodnic, 2015, 2017b. Depending on the social insurance systems in individual countries, they may therefore receive lower welfare benefits than would be the case if their full wage was declared.…”

Rethinking informal payments by patients in Europe: An institutional approach

“…underfunding in the face of growing healthcare needs and expectations; explanations based on economic behaviour) conditions [11,[24][25][26]. On the other hand, however, and reflecting the advances in institutional theory when studying other informal practices [22,23], it can be argued that institutions are "the rules of the game" which prescribe what is socially acceptable, and thus both constrain and encourage different types of activity [15]. In all societies, there are not only formal institutions (i.e., codified laws and regulations) that lay out the legal rules of the game, but also informal institutions which are the "socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels" [27, p.727].…”

“…Until now, institutional theory [14,15] has been widely applied in health services research and related fields to evaluate for example the adoption of health information technology [16][17][18], healthcare reform policies in public systems [19], patientcentred preventive care [20] and healthcare expenditure [21]. In this paper, and drawing inspiration from the application of institutional theory to the study of informal economic practices beyond healthcare [22,23], we here for the first time analyse informal payments to patients through the lens of institutional theory.…”

Civil Servants and Non-Western Migrants’ Perceptions on Pathways to Health Care in Serbia—A Grounded Theory, Multi-Perspective Study

“…Legislators may, therefore, have reversed the (to legislators) illegitimate practice to be a legitimate one. In this regard the institutional asymmetry perspective [ 64 , 65 ] distinguishes between informal (socially shared rules) and formal institutions (codified laws and regulation) [ 66 ]. When formal and informal institutions are in alignment and consequently state morality is in symmetry with individual morality, then the illegitimate practices (as perceived by the state) will be largely absent.…”

“…The higher the asymmetry between the institutions, the higher is the likelihood for informal patient payments. Institutional asymmetry, therefore, occurs when, for example, informal institutions take over the formal ones that are performing imperfectly [ 64 , 65 , 66 ]. In that sense, the theory also inspired the depicturing of the complex interaction occurring between formal and informal institutions when paying informally for health care.…”