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This study investigates the impact of institutional quality and banking competition on shadow economy for 127 economies for the period of 2005–2017. It further explores if institutional quality/competition shapes the relationship differently between banking competition/institutional quality and shadow economy. This paper uses the system GMM estimator to tackle potential omitted variable bias, endogeneity, and simultaneity issues. The findings suggest that overall, greater competition among banks and stricter institutions in the country reduce the size of shadow economy. Furthermore, impact of competition on shadow economy is even stronger in countries with weak institutions and the impact of institutional quality is greater in lower competitive environment. Only severe competition matters for shadow economy in case of developed countries. To sum up the novel findings of this research, competition and institutions complement each other in reducing the size of shadow economy. These findings are robust to different econometric estimators. The findings carry vital policy implications for the governments and regulators to play their part in reducing the shadow economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Motivation: The provision of health insurance is a public policy response to address the problem of catastrophic health expenditure, which leads to deprivation. Studies show a low uptake of health insurance among informal workers, but the focus has been on understanding enrolment behaviour. Little attention has been paid to understanding inactive membership among informal workers. Purpose: This article asks why informal workers in Kenya are abandoning health insurance schemes. It uses micro‐traders as a case study to understand inactive membership among voluntary contributors in Kenya's national health insurance scheme. Methods and approach: Based on primary data combining qualitative and quantitative methods, the article compares inactive members with active and non‐members to identify factors contributing to inactive status. Findings This article contends that unmarried voluntary contributors who consider themselves to be healthy and are own‐account workers with low and irregular earnings are more likely to drop out of the scheme. The key drivers of "inactiveness" are the inability to commit to the payment of regular premiums, due to the irregularity of earnings, the change of employment status from formal to informal, and dissatisfaction with scheme services. Policy implications: Since unmarried, "healthy," voluntary contributors are more likely to drop out, this creates problems of adverse selection in cases where the scheme retains "unhealthy" members, who are more likely to claim benefits. When "healthy" members drop out, this may force the scheme to increase the level of premiums, since contributory schemes rely on members' contributions. An increase in premiums may trigger further dropouts, which is counterproductive in relation to the global agenda of increasing access to essential health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The informal business sector has made enormous contributions to Nigeria's economic growth and development, but this sector is not given the necessary attention to transforming these businesses toward sustainability. This study explores the depth of informal business sector practices in Nigeria. It underscores the inputs of stakeholders in the transformation of businesses in the Nigerian informal sector to increase tax remittances and employment generation for job security in the Nigerian economy. Also, it underpins value chain performances to transform the informal sector and rescue it from liquidation through voluntary company arrangements, administration, merger, takeover, and acquisition schemes. The study adopts a conceptual review. The research relies on extant literature relating to the antecedence of informal business sector activities in Nigeria. It relies on reports from tertiary data sources such as academic articles, books, newspapers, the Internet, and website sources. It further explores the views of researchers, covering the informal sector development and the support of the provisions of the social services in Nigeria. There is the absence of a model for the transformation and sustainability of the informal sector enterprises in Nigeria. This study recommends a model approach to address informal sector enterprises' issues and challenges necessary to transform the businesses into a formal status while supporting their sustainability and resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]