Gendered Spaces of Informal Entrepreneurship in Soweto, South Africa

International Labour Review

2015

Given the commonality of employment in the informal economy, this paper moves beyond classifying nations by the composition of their formal economies and instead classifies countries by the extent and nature of employment in the informal economy. Analysing ILO data on the size and character of employment in the informal economy in 36 developing economies, the outcome is to reveal a significant correlation between cross-national variations in the degree and intensity of informalisation and cross-national variations in GNP per capita, corruption, poverty, taxation and social contribution levels. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for theory and policy.Keywords: informal sector; shadow economy; developing economies; economic development. IntroductionUntil now, classificatory schemas of economies have differentiated countries by the character of their formal economic systems, such as by their levels of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross National Income (GNI) per capita (World Bank, 2013), whether they are control, market or mixed economies (Arnold, 1996;Rohlf, 1998), or liberal or coordinated varieties of capitalism (Hall and Soskice, 2001). This would be appropriate if the majority of employment globally was in the formal economy. However, this is not the case (Jütting and Laiglesia, 2009;ILO, 2012ILO, , 2013 Williams and Lansky, 2013). Consequently, the aim of this paper is to develop a classification of economies according to the commonality and character of employment in the informal economy. The importance of doing this is that it not only brings to the fore the persistence of employment in the informal economy across the world but also draws attention away from the formal labour market in which only a minority of jobs globally are located and towards what is to be done about employment in the informal economy in which the majority of jobs are found.To do this, the first section will briefly review how employment in the informal economy is defined, provide a typology that classifies economies according to the extent and nature of employment in the informal economy and review the competing explanations for the cross-national variations in the prevalence and character of employment in the informal economy. In the second section, and to begin to classify economies and evaluate critically the competing explanations for the cross-national variations, a data set is then introduced, namely the ILO dataset of country surveys on the informal sector and informal employment, which contains data on the level and nature of employment in the informal economy in 36 developing countries. The third section then reports the descriptive findings on the crossnational variations in the degree and intensity of informalisation followed in the fourth section by a preliminary evaluation of the competing explanations for these cross-national variations. The fifth and final section then concludes by summarising the findings and discussing their theoretical and policy implications.

Section: Insert Table 1 About Herementioning

confidence: 99%

Out of the shadows: Classifying economies by the extent and nature of employment in the informal economy

International Labour Review

2015

“…This evaluates the ratio of exit-driven to exclusion-driven informal workers. Studies have found that 'exclusion' is more applicable to those engaged in waged informal employment and 'exit' to own-account informal workers (Chen, 2012;Perry and Maloney, 2007), exclusion more relevant in relatively deprived populations and exit in relatively affluent groups (Gurtoo and Williams, 2009), exit more relevant in developed economies and exclusion in developing countries (Gërxhani, 2004a;Maloney, 2004;Oviedo et al, 2009) and exclusion more relevant to women informal workers and exit rationales to men (Franck, 2012;Grant, 2013;Williams et al, 2013).…”

Section: Participation In the Informal Economy And Institutional Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining participation in the informal economy: An institutional incongruence perspective

International Sociology

Horodnic

Windebank

2015

Drawing inspiration from institutional theory, a small sub-stream of literature has proposed that participation in the informal economy arises from the lack of alignment of a society's formal institutions (i.e., its codified laws and regulations) with its informal institutions (i.e., the norms, values and beliefs of its population). To further advance this explanation, this paper reports a 2013 Eurobarometer survey involving 27,563 face-to-face interviews across 28 European countries. The finding is that there is a strong association between the degree to which formal and informal institutions are unaligned and participation in the informal economy. The greater is the asymmetry between the formal and informal institutions, the more likely is participation in the informal economy at both the individual-, population groupand country-level. A new policy approach for tackling the informal economy which focuses upon reducing this institutional incongruence is then discussed.

“…It has been contested for instance that the political economy perspective explains the informal economy in relatively deprived population groups and neo-liberal perspective in relatively affluent population groups (Gurtoo and Williams, 2009;Williams and Round, 2010;, that neo-liberal explanations are more relevant to developed economies and political economy explanations to developing economies (Oviedo et al, 2009) and that women are driven more by political economy exclusion motives and men more by neo-liberal voluntary exit motives (Franck, 2012;Grant, 2013;Williams, 2011).…”

Section: Evaluations Of the Rival Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining the Informal Economy: an Exploratory Evaluation of Competing Perspectives

2016

Tous droits réservés © Département des relations industrielles de l'Université Laval, 2015Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne.https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit.Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l'Université de Montréal, l'Université Laval et l'Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Résumé de l'article Le but de cet article est de procéder à une analyse exploratoire des conjonctures économiques et sociales générales associées aux grandes économies informelles. À cette fin, trois perspectives concurrentielles font l'objet d'une évaluation critique qui confirme, à maints égards, que les variations observées d'un pays à l'autre quant à la taille de l'économie informelle sont associées aux facteurs suivants : 1-le sous-développement (perspective de modernisation); 2-une taxation élevée, corruption et ingérence de l'État (perspective néolibérale); ou 3-une intervention étatique inadéquate pour protéger les travailleurs (perspective d'économie politique). En analysant la taille variable de l'économie informelle dans 33 économies développées et en transition, soit 28 pays européens et cinq autres pays membres de l'OCDE (Australie, Canada, Japon, Nouvelle-zélande et États-Unis), l'auteur arrive à la conclusion que les grandes économies informelles sont associées au sous-développement, lequel est mesuré en fonction de plusieurs facteurs : niveaux inférieurs de rNB par habitant; taux de participation à l'emploi; salaires moyens; force et qualité institutionnelle de la bureaucratie; taux élevés de corruption perçue au sein de la fonction publique; faibles niveaux de dépenses au chapitre de la protection sociale; et intervention du marché du travail pour protéger les groupes vulnérables, mais, également, recours restreint à des contrats de travail temporaires et des affectations temporaires. Au final, cette analyse est un encouragement à combiner les facteurs associés à ces trois perspectives pour en arriver à une compréhension plus nuancée et plus fine de la mesure dans laquelle les variations transnationales de la taille de l'économie informelle sont associées à des conjonctures socioéconomiques plus générales. En conclusion, l'auteur s'interroge sur les implications de cet exercice sur la théorie et la politique, et il souligne la nécessité de pousser plus loin l'analyse des différents impacts qu'aurait, sur la taille de l'économie informelle, une gamme plus large d'indicateurs de modernisation, de corruption, de taxation et de types d'intervention étatique. Explaining the Informal Economy: an Exploratory Evaluation of Competing PerspectivesColin C. Williams this paper evaluates critically whether the cross-national variations in the size of the informal economy are the result of: under-...