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This study explores the symmetric and asymmetric effects of the shadow economy on clean energy and air pollution of South Asian countries over the period 1991-2019. The short-run ARDL findings for the clean energy model suggest that shadow economy increases clean energy consumption in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, whereas this effect is negative for India and insignificant for other countries. The long-run results indicate the adverse impact only for India and the effects of tax revenue on clean energy are positively significant in Sri Lanka while negatively signiicant in Nepal and Bangladesh. Institutional quality significantly increases clean energy in Pakistan, India, and Nepal. However, in the case of Pakistan and Nepal, institutional quality deteriorated the environmental quality. The results for the pollution model confer that shadow economy increases emissions in Pakistan, decreases in Bangladesh and Nepal, and has no effect in India and Sri Lanka. The nonlinear ARDL results reveal that the positive components of the shadow economy significantly increase clean energy consumption only in Pakistan; however, the negative components of the shadow economy are negatively significant in all countries except Sri Lanka and Nepal. However, the negative component of the informal sector of the economy reduces CO2 emissions in India and increases CO2 emissions in Bangladesh and Nepal. The results offer important policy implications for achieving clean energy and better environmental quality in South Asian countries.

• The paper documents developments in Indian economic performance and the role of structural change in this performance. • Manufacturing is dominated by informal labor, which has a deleterious effect on overall manufacturing performance. • Productivity growth is driven by within sector growth, with positive contributions of formal and informal activities to this. • Labor reallocation to the informal segment of the manufacturing sector is growth reducing in the Indian manufacturing sector. • A shift to more productive informal activities across sub-sectors exists, but this doesn't offset the negative within effect. This paper examines the role of structural change in India's performance, and in particular the role of the informal segment in the stagnant growth of the Indian manufacturing sector. Using counterfactual analysis – including a modified shift-share approach – the paper considers to what extent the informal sector can help explain the poor performance of Indian manufacturing over the period 1980-2011. The results suggest that the informal segment of manufacturing has been a drag on overall manufacturing productivity growth, with the informal manufacturing segment unable to provide a productivity bonus when absorbing workers from the agricultural sector. Results from the shift-share analysis indicate that labor reallocation to the informal segment of the manufacturing sector is growth-reducing, with structural change being the main source of this reduction, an effect which in turn is driven by movements of employment within manufacturing sub-sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in comparative capitalism has seen an increasing interest in emerging economies and has made attempts at integrating the informal economy as a distinct and significant feature of the institutional configuration and reproduction of contemporary capitalisms. The way this has been achieved, however, is problematic as it has mainly worked with a dualist notion of the formal and informal economies, thereby making it difficult to conceptualise any interlinkages. This article argues that the relation between the formal and informal economies needs to be conceptualised as an interlocking one in order to analyse the constitutive place the informal economy has in the dynamics of formal institutions as well as the overall institutional configuration of emerging capitalisms. A focus on interlockages helps in conceptualising diversity, by bringing the heterogeneity of social relations within the formal and informal economies to the fore. This focus also allows for a more nuanced understanding of the distribution of resources across institutions and actors, and how change is shaped by struggles within specific interlocking configurations. India serves as a useful example in this respect insofar as the centrality of the informal economy to Indian capitalism can be shown to be due to the specific interlockages as opposed to the, probably more eye catching, size of its informal economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A stylized prediction of the development economics discourse is that informality will disappear with development, and yet in the last 20 years conventional measures of informality, far from declining, have either remained stagnant or have actually increased. This includes countries such as India where economic growth has been at historically high levels. What exactly is informality and what are its magnitudes and trends? What are the causes of informality and why is it not decreasing as predicted by standard theories of development? What are the consequences for inclusive economic growth of a large and increasing informal sector? What are feasible and desirable policy responses to informality? These are the questions that motivate this broad based overview of informality. The questions will be addressed based on recent and ongoing research on India and globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With rising prosperity and urbanisation in emerging and developing economies there has been a rapid expansion of waste generation. India, with an urban population of 377 million that is expected to reach 590 million by 2030, is also facing an unprecedented challenge of waste management. Significant uncertainties about the future trajectories of waste management exist, including the concept of waste as a resource and the role of the informal sector. This article describes an analytical framework that combines foresight and political economy methods used in a multi-stakeholder workshop setting to develop future scenarios for the sector. The process provides insights to increase participation in waste management policymaking in India by opening up the process beyond expert committees. The use of foresight tools with political economy analysis has the potential to democratise the policymaking process of waste management in India for the inclusion of all stakeholders and particularly the informal sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the new methodology of National Transfer Accounts, this paper quantifies the economic impacts of age structure transition and productivity growth rate on India's economic growth over the period 2005-2050 by formal and informal sectors. Growth effects are captured by the first demographic dividend (FDD) and distinguished by sector-specific (a) productivity age profiles, (b) relative and absolute labor productivity growth rates, and (c) population distribution for the benchmark year during 2004-2005. Empirical results show that in the presence of these sector-specific differences, growth effects are higher and the sources of lower and slower FDD are attributable to lower productivity levels, growth rates of productivity, and growth rate of effective number of producers in informal sector. Further, throughout, growth effects of productivity are found to be stronger than the age structure transition. Sensitivity results show that growth effects can be remarkably higher at an annual rate of 17 % if benchmark output can be doubled in the informal sector, or FDD can be sustained up to 2050 if India's productivity profile in formal (and informal) sector has a comparable shape with that of Japan/USA (and Philippines/Indonesia/Nigeria). Overall implications show that stronger policy efforts are required for improvement in productivity levels and growth in informal sector to maximize long-run economic growth through FDD. These new results and implications may be of relevance for formulation of age-structure and informal sector related growth promotion policies in other developing countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than 60 per cent of Sri Lanka's labour force is employed in the informal sector, which comprises various economic activities in agriculture, fishing, livestock rearing, micro and small-scale enterprises, petty trade, and other small commercial activities. The informal sector is characterised by low social security and changing incomes. Given this, it is interesting to determine why such a large proportion of the labour force chooses to participate in the informal sector. This paper attempts to answer this question by using household survey data from two time periods. The paper lays special focus on assessing how access to services and infrastructure affects participation in the informal sector. The results show that a multitude of factors relating to individual preferences, location characteristics, and labour market conditions affect the occupational choice of individuals. Moreover, participation in the informal sector is due to a mix of market considerations and skill mismatches, moderated by household and societal factors. The paper argues for improving economic development in a more equitable manner across geographical regions, on the one hand, and improving the quality and relevance of educational opportunities, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper in an attempt to examine if the manufacturing sector is still the engine of growth delineates the inter-connections among several activities based on time series data on employment in different components of the organized sector in India. The analysis is pursued in the vector auto-regression (VAR) framework taking into account the results of variance decomposition analysis and the impulse response function. The findings suggest that some of the activities are growing independent of the manufacturing sector. Nevertheless manufacturing, construction and community, social and personal services are the most important drivers. Finally, the paper predicts the informal sector employment based on the magnitude of employment in different components of the organized or formal sector. Given the narrow margin of error of forecast the paper argues that in the absence of time series information on total employment, the time series on organized sector employment can be used for necessary predictions and planning required for employment and poverty. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This commentary discusses the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy 2013 of India in relation to the bottom-up 'informal science'. The main intention is to see how informal innovations or informal ways of knowledge generation in the informal sector are dealt with in the new policy document. Informal economy or informal sector, which constitutes a staggering 94% of India's workforce, forms the main source of employment and livelihood. However, neither the current Science, Technology and Innovation Policy document nor any other innovation literature proposes a comprehensive policy framework that leverages the strengths of informal sector innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]