Search

Studying collective action in the platform economy against the backdrop of the informal economy in India, I make two arguments that show how work organization in the platform economy enables collective action and distinguishes it from the informal sector. First, I argue that platform work organization through algorithmic work allocation, high employer visibility and algorithmic rather than direct managerial control makes collective action possible. In the informal economy, layers of middlemen often obscure the employment relationship by denying workers a clear contender and the opportunity to develop relationships of solidarity. Second, platform workers address their demands to two targets: the platform company and the state. Informal worker unions have no single, identifiable employer and traditionally confine their demands to the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal labour has become one of the main ways of earning income and a reason for non-payment of taxes to the state budget. Governments and international organisations are making many efforts to study the phenomenon of informal labour and formulate proposals for further formalisation of informal labour to «come out of the shadows» of activities in various fields. The relevance of our study is due to the rapid spread of informal employment and informal labour in various spheres of society, which entails economic losses for each state and a lack of faith in the declared labour relations. The purpose of the study is to identify possible ways and prospects for formalising informal labour, to determine the legal aspects of formalising informal labour, to analyse the challenges to the social protection of workers in the course of such formalisation, and to improve the current labour legislation. The author formulated legal conclusions on the legal aspects of formalisation of informal labour, the ways of such formalisation and its prospects. In particular, conclusions on social challenges for all participants in the so-called informal labour relations were pro-vided. Finally, proposals for improving the legislation on informal employment were formulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Relationship marketing (RM) has rarely been applied to micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in the informal economy (IE). Thus, this study aims to explore the RM strategy of service rendering micro-enterprises in the IE of a sub-Saharan African country like Ghana. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a qualitative research approach using a multiple case study design, semi-structured interview and a random sampling technique to sample 15 micro-enterprises. Thereafter, the case was analysed thematically. Findings: Results show that micro-enterprises in the IE engage in multiple dimensions of RM in their line of business. Also, micro-enterprises in the IE perceived RM as customer care and somewhat their standard of RM benefits measurement are different from those firms in the formal sector. Furthermore, micro-enterprises in the IE face challenges such as high resource commitment, harassment and the technological gap in practising their RM strategy. Practical implications: MSMEs in the IE should develop a framework to minimise the shortfall of the challenges associated with RM implementation for business continuity and growth because customers are the lifeblood of the business. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first known study that looks at RM practices of MSMEs in the IE. It has thrown light on the understudied subject of RM in MSMEs. For micro-enterprises operating in the Ghanaian IE, the benefits to be derived from practising RM are rewarding. The adopted qualitative methodology has provided an in-depth insight into a vital area for both academics and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Street vendors are an indispensable part of the urban social ecosystem, but due to a lack of comprehensive understanding, many cities have adopted simple eviction policies, resulting in the gradual marginalization and stigmatization of the street economy. The efficient governance of street vendors requires the comprehensive investigation of their business scale and spatial distribution information. However, traditional methods have limitations in terms of automatically surveying large-scale street vendor information, particularly spatial distribution. This paper proposes a method for the automatic investigation spatial distribution of street vendors based on street-view images and a deep-learning object recognition model. Street-view images were collected at fixed intervals according to the urban road network, and 1, 957 images containing one or more vendors were selected through human-machine interaction to establish street vendor label data. To achieve high recognition model accuracy, the category labels were subdivided into four categories: ground stalls, table stalls, tricycle stalls, and small truck stalls, based on the goods carriers used by street vendors. A deep neural-networkbased image object detection model based on YOLO v4 was constructed to identify street vendors in the streetview image library, with an average F1 value of 0.77 and an mAP of 0.67. The accuracy of the model was satisfactory for investigating the number and location of street vendors covering the main roads in the city and then applying a kernel density distribution model to evaluate the spatial distribution pattern of street vendors. Using street vendors in Guangzhou as a case study, the proposed automatic investigation model identified 26,119 street vendors from 3,339,062 street-view images. The results showed that the street vendors were distributed in a multicenter aggregation pattern in the central urban area, mainly concentrated in areas with high pedestrian traffic, such as subway stations and urban villages; their numbers increased as road grades decreases. Street vendors were mainly distributed in areas with medium rents. The proposed method is helpful for performing the efficient, low-cost, and city-scale mapping of street vendors; the results obtained provide suggestions for formulating and implementing spatial governance policies for the informal economy and further provide suggestions for improving and implementing spatial governance policies for open and diverse urban street-view images. The results can be used as a reference for the location preference analysis of practitioners, the exploration of NIMBY syndrome, and the determination of the formalization zone. Although street-view images have an insufficient spatiotemporal coverage, using them to perform street vendor investigations is a low-cost and efficient method compared with the use of traditional investigation methods and data sources. In addition, the method proposed in this article can be coupled with multitask deep learning algorithms to investigate additional dimensions of street vendor information, such as the sex, age, and type of business of street vendors. Relevant research needs to be conducted in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that in many sociological theorizing on gender, work, and employment, relatively little is known about how men who engage in female dominated informal works make sense of their gendered identities. Drawing from qualitative research in a rapidly urbanizing Ghanaian city, we examine the meanings and implications of men's involvement in gender atypical informal works. An unpacking of the constructions of gendered identity reveals the situative strategies that men may deploy to maintain, embolden, and/or adjust their masculinities congruent with dominant cultural scripts. In the end, we argue that men who engage in traditionally feminine work are accused of failing to herald the mainstreaming of the fulfillment of hegemonic masculinity which is a necessary cultural milestone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women own account workers earned just over half what men own account workers earned and women employees in formal firms earned less than men employees in formal firms. However, mainstream economists have tended to remain negative or hostile towards the informal economy: viewing informal workers (especially the self-employed) as non-compliant and non-productive - a problem to be tackled - and blaming the persistence of informality on informal workers themselves or on labour regulations and social policies that are seen to create perverse incentives for firms and workers to operate informally. Is it more perverse that a few workers and firms shift to informality when non-contributory social protection is offered to informal workers or that informal workers, well over half of all workers, do not receive social protection and face catastrophic costs when family members fall ill, are disabled, become old or die? First, there is a high prevalence of self-employment; most self-employment is informal and most informal workers are self-employed; and most informal self-employed are own account workers, who do not hire others, or contributing family workers in/on family firms or farms trying to earn a decent living, not entrepreneurs who hire others. The second is that social protection systems that combine contributory social insurance for formal workers with non-contributory social protection for informal workers drive informality, as both firms and workers chose informality, which enables them to access some social protection benefits without having to pay employment-linked social insurance contributions. [Extracted from the article]

This paper investigates the heterogeneous, long, and short-run and causal relationship between the size of the informal economy and three usual variables related to each of the most important theoretical approaches on informality, namely, the dualist, legalist, and structuralist view. Specifically, we consider GDP per capita, institutional quality and trade openness. We explore this relationship, using novel econometric techniques such as CS-ARDL panel data approach to analyses a sample of 133 countries over the period 1995 to 2017. The results show a long-run relationship between the variables at the global level and by country group. GDP per capita, institutional quality and trade openness are negatively associated with the size of the informal economy. The signs confirm the dual and legal hypothesis; however, the sign is opposite to that suggested by the structuralist hypothesis. Additionally, we obtain a U-shaped relationship between the size of the informal economy and the level of economic development. This means that the informal economy does not tend to disappear in the long run. In terms of policy implications, we provide support about the effectiveness of GDP per capita, institutional quality and trade openness in diminishing the size of the informal economy. Nevertheless, based on our results of a U-shaped relationship between informality and GDP per capita, public policy should be designed conditional on the level of development of a certain country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on fieldwork among pimps and sex workers in Eastern Romania, this article explores the personal skills that pimps deem necessary in order to be successful in the transnational street business of pimping in other EU countries. The article introduces the concepts of "reading desires" and "instillation of love," which enable the pimps to "access" the desires of others. Through these concepts, I argue that the pimps have increased social capacities in distinct social arenas. These skills are not necessarily useful in other arenas of their lives, but in their preparation for entering the transnational street economy abroad, these skills are crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African migrants working in street trading business in Durban, South Africa often face xenophobia and must navigate policies regulating the informal economy. However, they sustain livelihoods in urban markets through building friendships while maintaining transnational connections back home. Based on qualitative research conducted in 2019 and 2021 with thirty street traders from Senegal, The Gambia, Nigeria, and Malawi at the Workshop Flea Market in Durban, the article interrogates the way in which friendship and conviviality emerge in informal market spaces. Building on AbdouMaliq Simone's concept of "people as infrastructure," we show how migrant street traders in the Workshop Market invest in the urban collective, while locally and transnationally connected through economic and affective exchanges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The size of the informal economy in Poland is estimated by means of the Currency Demand Approach (CDA). Using quarterly data for the period 1999–2019, we adopt two separate econometric approaches. First, we specify a single equation model to estimate it with the Fully-Modified OLS method. Second, the CDA coefficients are treated as a cointegrating vector in a cointegrated VAR. The size of the informal economy in Poland is found to have diminished from about 32% of GDP in 2000 to about 12% of GDP in 2019. We provide confidence intervals for our estimates which, to our best knowledge, are rarely presented in the literature; their width ranges from 3 to 7% of GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although informal entrepreneurship has attracted attention from entrepreneurship scholars, it remains under-theorized. This systematic review critically analyses, evaluates and integrates data on informal entrepreneurship gathered from studies published in eight (8) leading entrepreneurship journals. Although this form of entrepreneurship is practiced across the globe, it is generally perceived as an activity occurring in the peripheries of mainstream economics and inferior to formal entrepreneurship. This review develops essential knowledge for entrepreneurship research by theorizing informal entrepreneurship as a potent process in business formation and it establishes a future research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the practice of under-reporting wages (and its multifarious forms) in the construction industry, which is a dominant type of undeclared work found in the industry, and how it can be explained and tackled. To do so, a mixed-methods approach is used, including in-depth interviews, focus groups and a representative national survey comprising 1,212 respondents collected during April–May 2021 in Romania, a country with one of the highest shares of undeclared work in the European Union. A logistic regression analysis shows that this practice is not confined to vulnerable groups but is rather an extensive phenomenon. Evaluating how wage under-reporting could be tackled, the finding is that there is no significant relationship between how employees perceive the level of sanction and the risk of detection and their likelihood of participating in wage under-reporting. However, the results reveal the significance of social norms; those who have acquaintances who receive under-reported wages are more likely to engage themselves in this wage arrangement. The implications for theory and practice are then considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Venture capital and private equity represent established asset categories utilized for funding formal entrepreneurial endeavors, often drawing investments from adept fund managers who typically refrain from engaging in informal ventures. However, it is not well investigated how informal economic activities impact resource allocation in private equity. In this paper, we analyze private equity data from 32 economies across Europe and the Asia Pacific region, spanning from 1996-2017. Utilizing a random effects estimation technique, we find that shadow economies have a strong negative impact on private equity investment and inhibit the positive effect of both stock markets and GDP per capita on private equity investment. This suggests that despite a thriving stock market for exit opportunities and favorable wealth conditions facilitating the supply side, economies witness constrained private equity investments due to the existence of informal sectors. This research makes a significant contribution to the cross-country private equity literature and offers valuable policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTThe size of the informal economy in Poland is estimated by means of the Currency Demand Approach (CDA). Using quarterly data for the period 1999–2019, we adopt two separate econometric approaches. First, we specify a single equation model to estimate it with the Fully-Modified OLS method. Second, the CDA coefficients are treated as a cointegrating vector in a cointegrated VAR. The size of the informal economy in Poland is found to have diminished from about 32% of GDP in 2000 to about 12% of GDP in 2019. We provide confidence intervals for our estimates which, to our best knowledge, are rarely presented in the literature; their width ranges from 3 to 7% of GDP.

The paper analyzes ways of the informal economy cutback in the Republic of Uzbekistan, used in the tax sphere. The purpose of the study is to summarize the tax measures to solve this problem. During past few years, there have been taken certain steps in this direction, such as concessions for small businesses in catering, reducing the turnover tax rate in the real estate business, holding large-circulation “check” lotteries with valuable prizes, bringing construction industry workers into the legal field, digitalization of tax administration. According to the authors, the proposed tools correspond both to the practices characteristic of foreign experience and to the conditions peculiarities for making business in Uzbekistan. Also, the authors identified some directions for improving the state tax policy in counteracting the spread of the informal economy: focusing on reducing cash turnover through the use of tax deductions for personal income tax and VAT refunds on purchases; the overall tax culture development; digitalization of the tax reporting procedure; improving a legal status the regulation of the self-employed citizens; initiation of a single tax account mechanism. The scientific novelty lies in the research methodology. Based on a comparative legal analysis, the experience of various countries is used to illustrate the features of tax measures applied in practice to reduce the informal economy. The authors assume the theoretical results of the work will embody in proposals for improving the national tax legislation and will improve the Russian economic and legal doctrine, as well as the level of legal research within the EAEU and the CIS.

The aim of this paper is to deepen understanding of the relationship between sustainable development, localisation and the purchase of goods and services from the informal economy. This has not before been investigated. To do so, it reports a survey of 1,209 respondents conducted during October-December 2021 in Romania, a country with one of the largest informal economies in the European Union. The findings reveal a link between consumers' motives to purchase informal goods and services and the pursuit of sustainable development through localisation. The analysis shows that there is no purely sustainability-driven consumer in the informal economy, but this rationale is prevalent as one of several motives for a large proportion of consumers purchasing goods and services from the informal economy, who do so explicitly for the purposes of environmental protection and localisation. The implications for theorising and tackling the informal economy are then discussed.

Despite the enormous amounts of human resources engaged in warehousing, warehouse labor remains virtually invisible to the public, both among consumers and in the academia. A lot of research is dedicated to the transformation of labor relations within platform economy, including precarity and “uberization” of labor, as well as digital technology-mediated surveillance and control over employees during working hours. At the other “pole” are numerous studies on the informal (“garage”) economy. This article is based on a 1.5-month ethnography I conducted in the summer of 2021 in the warehouse complex of a prominent Russian marketplace. Engaging in a dialogue with both “poles” mentioned, my observations in the warehouse suggest the simultaneous coexistence of two realities. The first deals with various forms of digital control of employees, ranging from access to the workspace to the regulation of output and eventual earnings. The second is predominantly informal and is based on the deliberate restriction of workers' access to “rare” resources (“work”) and information (“details”). Here I attempt to show the complex, at times conflicting interaction of formal and informal components of warehouse labor, combining the neo-Marxist conceptual apparatus with the metaphor of C. Geertz's “bazaar economy”.

The study aimed at the championship season on the subject of the study, which is the hidden economy or the informal economy. By focusing on some of the issues in this topic that formed the problem of the study; They are the economic and social effects of this type of economic activity, with a statement of methods for estimating this type of economic practice. The study aimed to draw attention to the reality of this activity in selected countries, with reference to the Arab countries in particular and the developing world in general. In order to achieve the objectives of this study, the analytical descriptive approach was used, with an explanation of the methodologies, methods, and methods that are used to estimate the size of the shadow economy in different countries. The study concluded that the economy is still and whatever positives it presents, it remains a human activity fraught with dangers and has negative effects that cannot be ignored on the formal economy, and this is indicated by the current study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the barriers and challenges for decent job creation along the value chain of plastic recycling that street waste pickers (SWPs) face in the urban regions of Cape Town with a mixed method research design. The findings from the descriptive case study's primary survey data indicated that the informal recycling economy in these regions has little to no barriers of entry. Initiatives to absorb individuals into this economy could potentially help decrease the unemployment level of unskilled and lowly educated people. On average, SWPs earn about R155 for a day's waste and R632 for a week's waste. The econometric results revealed that SWPs from the coloured population group who do not have access to trolleys yield statistically significantly lower earnings. Assisting SWPs through the provision of trolleys and protective gear could potentially be an advantage to sustain their income and create decent employment opportunities for SWPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this outpouring of gratitude, an army of low-paid workers in the gig economy of day laborers, nannies, cleaners, and delivery workers went unnoticed - even those who performed that most essential of tasks, delivering food to people during a lockdown. Keywords: Worker's Justice Project; informal economy; gig economy; deliveristas; DoorDash; Grubhub; living wage EN Worker's Justice Project informal economy gig economy deliveristas DoorDash Grubhub living wage 23 29 7 06/07/23 20230501 NES 230501 Editor's Note In the winter 2023 issue of I New Labor Forum i , columnist Kressent Pottenger exposed the harsh and demeaning conditions food delivery workers have endured for the privilege of earning a subminimum wage plus tips. Alliances with other worker centers connected delivery workers and helped them build their organizing capacity. In California, several units of grocery store delivery workers (regular employees of those stores) have joined the United Food and Commercial Workers and gained improvements: I Are the deliveristas thinking about affiliating with a union?. [Extracted from the article]

This article constitutes an empirical contribution regarding the correlation between economic informality and the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru. Based on interviews with merchants in the informal sector of the city of Huancayo, the pandemic-related impacts are analyzed in relation to income and livelihoods. It is argued that informal employment played an important role in the tragic indicators of public health in the country. The intrinsic flexibility of this type of activities, specifically for walking merchants, and the lack of access to systems and programs of social security were the main reasons that people worked in this sector to replace the income they lost due to confinement. Thus, the notion “replacement of income” in the economy appeared during the pandemic. The heterogeneity among those who carry out informal work, specifically in terms of their access to different resources, enabled such work and enabled some people to control their exposure to the virus. It is concluded that the focus on economic formalization of the last decades of financial liberalization are not considered advantages that informal activities offer in relation to formalization. In fact, informality continues to offer the best opportunity for immediate income and highly flexible options, in particular for adapting to crisis situations like the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing significance of non-compliant employment practice in the British economy has motivated scrutiny of the effectiveness of current regulation. In some markets, charges of labour exploitation, underpayment of the national minimum wage and associated 'wage theft' from workers are rife where business operations are characterised by academics, regulators and stakeholders as exuding 'permissive visibility'. The current landscape of enforcement and regulation of informal business and employment practices features complex structural and operational issues for regulators subject to tight resource constraints. These enable permissiveness and offer scope for strategic regulatory tolerance of some violation types, possibly to raise compliance rates for other types of violations. Drawing on extensive empirical evidence and qualitative data sources in one market sector (hand car washes), this study investigates some key hypotheses focussing on compliance and responses by businesses and regulators to the extant regulatory regime. These inform a pragmatic institutional analysis considering the merits of some movement towards a single enforcement body instead of the existing arrangements featuring multiple regulatory institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In seeking to explain the persistence of the informal economy – defined as the set of economic activities that are illegal yet legitimate to some large groups – scholars often focus on instrumental economic factors; in doing so, the role of morality is often overlooked. In response, we conduct a qualitative study of Pakistani counterfeit bazaars, to understand how market participants construct moral legitimacy in a way that justifies participation in, and thus contributes to sustaining, the informal economy. We reveal how the terms 'counterfeit' (representing the informal economy) and 'authentic' (representing the formal economy) function as an oppositional pair, both within the emic perspective of market participants but also within a baseline etic perspective of Western Intellectual Property regimes. Compared with this baseline, we find that market participants engage in three types of semantic transformation (invalidation, reframing and inversion) that shape moral assessments of authentic and counterfeit consumption. Through our study, we first contribute to a better understanding of how legitimacy in the informal economy is constructed. We also contribute to theory on 'legitimacy as perception', indicating how moral legitimization can occur through a dynamic of binary opposition between what is deemed to be 'moral' and 'immoral'. Our final contribution is towards understanding how morality around counterfeit consumption is constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the determinants of the informal economy is a crucial issue in economic development due to its far-reaching effects on development efforts. Previous studies focused exclusively on factors that can potentially reduce the relative size of the shadow economy. However, these attempts have not enjoyed much success to date in Africa, where informality has continued to thrive. We contend that realistic medium-term goals, as opposed to obligatory formalisation, could increase the output of informal businesses by providing enough infrastructure and a welcoming business climate, which would at the same time foster formalisation. Using OLS, FE and system GMM with data on 42 African countries covering 2003–2018, we find that infrastructure development reduces the relative size of the shadow economy in African countries. Our results remained consistent when we controlled for the effects of other determinants of the informal economy, employed other estimators, and used an alternative measure of the informal economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the world and especially in areas of widespread poverty, firms start their operations without registering with relevant authorities (i.e., in the informal economy). We explore whether firms that initiated their operations in the informal economy but later register have a higher propensity to export than firms that register at the time of their foundation. We reason that the experience of having operated informally provides formally registered firms with the advantage of low-cost and flexible exploration but also a domestic legitimacy liability. We suggest that these factors likely contribute to making foreign export markets more attractive after registration. Based on a comprehensive sample of sub-Saharan African firms, we find that, conditional on registration, firms with an informal legacy have a higher propensity to initiate exporting than firms that started their operations formally. We contribute with theoretical and policy-oriented insights on the dynamics of informality and exporting. Funding: The work of M. M. Larsen was supported by the Carlsbergfondet [Grant CF17_0384]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Street vendors are often targeted for removal from city streets and sidewalks in the name of beautification, sanitation or (re)development. These removals are commonly described as conflicts over the use of urban public space. However, focusing on conflicts over the use of public space provides an incomplete picture. In addition to contention over the use of space, street vending also involves debates over the users of public space. Through the lens of street vending in Mumbai, this research shows that conflicts over vending are often tied to who is vending, reflecting a local political atmosphere concerned with preventing 'outsiders' from working (and living) in the city. However, vendors are not helpless, and try to capitalise on informal institutions, specifically hafta, and intermediaries, to make claims regarding their urban belonging status. While informal institutions may mediate questions of urban citizenship and belonging, they provide only limited opportunities, leaving vendors often with a de facto rather than de jure vending, and urban belonging, status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Les Cahiers du CREAD is the property of Centre de Rrecherche en Economie Appliquee pour Developpement and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The informal economy has become a vibrant and growing phenomenon across the world. Within the context of sustainable development, connecting local economic development (LED) to the informal economy is imperative. However, the informal economy remains largely neglected within the conventional LED literature. Using key informant interviews and focus group discussions, this paper found that recognizing, embracing and supporting informal economy contributes to a more inclusive form of LED. The study concluded that local government authorities need to be more innovative in recognising the informal economy as part of local governments' strategies for addressing unemployment, and supporting livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of the informal economy on bilateral exports in sub‐Saharan African countries. We use a gravity model, to which we add indicators of the informal economy and indicator variables for different economic regions. The study used Pseudo‐Poisson Maximum Likelihood (PPML) and Heckman estimation techniques on data from the period 2002–2018. The results show that the informal economy has a negative impact on bilateral inter‐community exports and a positive impact on bilateral intra‐community exports. These results thus support the idea that the informal economy can accelerate the integration of regional economic communities and ultimately facilitate the establishment of bilateral export free trade areas at the continental level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the long-term and causal relationship between tourism activity and the informal economy in 76 countries from 1995 to 2015. We explore this relationship at the global level and by country group, using panel, co-integration techniques that indicate the existence of a long-run co-integration relationship between tourism and informal economy for the whole sample and at the level of country groups. Additionally, the paper analyzes the long-run coefficients of the model by using fully modified ordinary least square regressions (FMOLS). The results from FMOLS evidence a negative and significant impact of tourism on the informal economy at the global level and in high, upper-middle, and lower-middle income countries, but a positive link in low-income countries. However, the results reveal a heterogeneous long-run relationship within country groups. Also, the result of the Dumitrescu-Hurlin Granger causality test indicates bidirectional causality in the global sample, but the direction of causality varies by country group. The main policy implication derived from our findings suggests that in order to reduce the size of informal economy, policy-makers should foster tourism activities. JEL Classification: : J01, L83, C23, O57, C00, C01 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Economic & Social Research is the property of Abant Izzet Baysal University, Faculty of Economics & Administrative Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This case study focuses on the participation of women street vendors in the central business area of Asmara, Eritrea, particularly around the chicken market and outlying streets. Women who fail to find jobs in the formal sector engage in alternative work in the informal economy (street vending). Today, many street vendors depend on their illicit business to earn them and rescue themselves from different poverty levels. This case study seeks to examine the involvement of women in street vending activities. Therefore, this study aims to contribute to the apparent literature gaps by utilizing qualitative and ethnographic analysis of the cause of their participation and the problems they encounter. This study applied anthropological ethnographic fieldwork methodology. Furthermore, the study involved participant observation, semi-structured and in-depth interviews and photographs as a leading data collection method among the women vendors. Implementing these research methods examined the overall daily routine and livelihood of the street vending women. Additionally, focused on the reasons why they engaged and what practical problems they faced, both during the work in the street and other socio-cultural problems in their home, were examined and described in this literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1940s, the people of the neighbourhoods (kampungs) around Surabaya's derelict Ngagel industrial estate have made a living by repurposing the remains of what was once one of Asia's most modern road, rail and industry networks. The remains—in the form of leftover fuel, labour and factory parts—are used to rebuild and repair improvised transport vehicles like bicycle‐taxis (becak), minibuses (bemo) and motorbike‐taxis (ojek). The repurposing happens at the limits of a capital‐intensive heavy infrastructure of factories, trams and buses. The limits are those points where such infrastructure fails and a household‐funded mosquito‐fleet of light vehicles succeeds. Repurposing gives those who do it a right to infrastructure by providing the city with much‐needed public transport. In Surabaya, public transport begins at its limits through the improvisations of people who live in the productive remains of capital‐intensive heavy infrastructure. These people live in Surabaya's deindustrialized urban core, where life is made in the ruins of infrastructure through the breaking‐down of it, the reworking of it, the right to it, and the leakage of it—the means through which rank‐and‐file people rather than states and corporations forge infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Declaration by the Labour and Employment Ministers of the BRICS countries, “Quality Jobs and Inclusive Employment Policies,” guarantees that formalization of labor markets is a global priority for the BRICS countries, as informal employment hampers productivity, potential economic growth and efforts to improve the welfare of populations worldwide. Taking into account this strategic goal, the authors analyze the informal employment processes in the BRICS countries and speculate on the transition from informal to formal employment. The article addresses the issues of inhomogeneous notional ranges used to define informal employment and recommends that the possibilities provided by labor legislation and government employment policy (such as increasing the number of formal working places and dynamic development of labor legislation directed at regulation of new employment forms) be used to tackle these issues. The potential of the social security right for achieving the goals of transition to a formal economy and social security coverage is characterized in detail; various legal forms of social security (for example, government social security, social insurance (mandatory as well as voluntary) and social support) are analyzed; and the possibilities of their application to informal workers in the BRICS countries are defined.

The non-observed economy is an integral part of the modern economic system. It is a threat to economic security in conditions of slow stagnation. The relevance of this study lies in the fact that the identification of factors influencing the non-observed economy makes it possible to develop proposals to combat this phenomenon. Also, this paper describes the problems that researchers in the Republic of Moldova face when econometrically modeling the dependence of the non-observed economy on socio-economic indicators. The novelty and purpose of the study is the construction of models with one equation, where the endogenous variable is the level of the non-observed economy in value terms and the share of the non-observed economy in Gross Domestic Product. The main research methods are regression analysis and economic and mathematical modeling. At the first step of the study, the identified main factors of influence that determine the size of the shadow economy in twenty-eight countries were systematized. In the next step, the authors established the available series of statistical data published by the National Bureau of Statistics and determined exogenous variables. The authors used the program for econometric analysis EViews 9 in constructing the models. The single equation models were tested inclusively for first and second-order autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity. The constructed models showed that the non-observed economy is positively affected by the growth of the main sectors of the national economy and by an increase in the unemployment rate. While the rise in foreign trade turnover, namely imports, negatively affects the endogenous variable. There is an identical (negative) relationship between the freight turnover and the level of the non-observed economy.