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Additional file 3: Output of chi2-test Ireland, different income quintiles.

Additional file 2: Output of DD and DDD.

Supplementary_material for Calculating Value Added of Prostitution with Multiple Data: A New Approach for Belgium by Stef Adriaenssens, and Jef Hendrickx in Public Finance Review

nrpages: 41 status: published

status: published

One often explains why people engage in the informal sector with the Allingham-Sandmo model, resting on taxation level, deterrence and risk aversion. This neoclassical approach explains noncompliance fairly well, but anomalies exist. Evenly parsimonious, Alejandro Portes develops a institutional and social capital approach introducing regulation, enforcement, and the social wiring of society. The extent of regulation fuels informal transactions, while effective enforcement inhibits it. Portes hypothesizes that informality is fostered by social relations and trust, and curbed by institutional trust. This paper tests Portes’ theory with data from the European Social Survey in 13 countries complemented with country level data on regulation and enforcement. Ordinary and multilevel logistic regressions largely confirm the predictions regarding regulation, institutional trust and social relations. The limited variation of enforcement in the countries studied and the measurement of social trust does not allow for a definitive assessment of the relevance of those variables.

nrpages: 8 status: published

Given the deviant nature of prostitution, expectations and information used to depend on clients personal experiences. This has changed fundamentally during recent decades. The emergence of user-generated websites discussing commercial sexual exchanges has allowed moral economies of prostitution as a distinctly social phenomenon to develop. This contribution reconstructs the social norms of prostitution clients with the help of a qualitative analysis of internet reviews by clients in the Netherlands and Belgium. Clients develop a dominant market fatalist approach to exchanges with sex workers, so that prostitution is constructed as "just happening" paralleling everyday consumption practices. It emulates mainstream exchanges, for example in fixed price norms. It is argued that this market fatalist approach consists of a moral economy concealed behind a veil of amorality. Reconciling these market fatalist expectations with an equally strong demand for authentic and personal experiences with the sex worker is further analysed and discussed.

De ‘ongekende samenleving’ refereert aan het geheel van personen en activiteiten die niet door de officiële wereld worden geregistreerd. Daar behoren informele economische activiteiten zoals zwartwerk en belastingontduiking toe, maar ook die inwoners van Vlaanderen die niet geregistreerd zijn, doorgaans aangeduid met het begrip ‘irreguliere migranten’. In deze bijdrage wordt een overzicht gegeven van de kennis over beide categorieën van de ongekende samenleving, en van de relaties tussen beide. Irreguliere migranten zijn voor hun overleving immers grotendeels aangewezen op informeel werk; omgekeerd wordt informeel werk ook door vele anderen beoefend. Op basis van het beschikbare onderzoek toont deze bijdrage schattingen van informele activiteiten en van de aanwezigheid van irreguliere migranten in Vlaanderen. Aan de hand van de cases van huishoudelijke hulp en de bouwsector wordt actueel onderzoek over de informele economie toegelicht. Een laatste sectie doet verslag van onderzoek dat focust op de informele overlevingsactiviteiten van irreguliere migranten. ispartof: De Sociale Staat van Vlaanderen 2009 pages:335-362 ispartof: pages:335-362 status: published

A vivid but fragmented research tradition traces the economic ethic to religious beliefs and practices. The problem has a broad social- scientific relevance, referring to the more general problem of the societal relevance of religious practices and convictions on the one hand, and to the relevance of non-economic phenomena for the economy on the other. In this paper, working on a Weberian and Durheimian theoretical framework, we start from two important functions for capitalist economies: market anomie (the extent people are prepared to break moral rules in their economic life) and market distrust (the conviction the market does not function in a trustworthy manner). Both market anomie and the market perception are measured through the second wave of the European Social Survey (2004), an extensive survey in twenty-four European countries. The relevance of religion as a causal factor of these dimensions of capitalist morality is compared to the competing materialist explanation of market dispositions. This theory basically assumes that the social position (class or status group) determines attitudes toward the market. We hypothesize that the religiosity is most important for the market anomie, while market distrust is based on everyday experiences, thus on stratified position. The data support both hypotheses.

Households depend on the existence of a home. The means invested in the maintenance of this home represent an important economic sector. However, the role of formal outsourcing in this maintenance work is often overestimated. Commissioning a formal enterprise is only one possibility to maintain the household’s home. Alternative modes of production are informal outsourcing and do-it-yourself with unpaid help from primary network members like kin and friends. In this paper we report the results of a survey of a representative sample of Flemish households (n=240). In a first part the different production modes are quantified according to two different methods (expenses versus time invested). The question is not only how prevalent moonlighting is; it is just as important to estimate the proportion of do-it-yourself in relation to outsourcing. Both questions are relevant from a socio-economic and a policy viewpoint. In the analytical part of the paper we construct and test a theoretical explanation of the determinants of the choice made. We hypothesize that the complexity of the maintenance work has an impact, but also dimensions of social and cultural capital. Thereby we focus on factors such as dexterity, occupational acquaintance with maintenance work, social trust and social contacts. With the help of a multinomial logistic regression support for these hypotheses is established.

This article proposes and applies a method to estimate the revenues of beggars in Brussels (Belgium). This is relevant for three reasons. First, though the literature on the informal economy assumes that the income will be low, we lack reliable empirical knowledge of informal street-level activities like begging, in particular due to the prevalence of many irregular Eastern-European immigrants among the begging population. Second, popular representation of beggars often depicts them as fraudulent, criminal and wealthy. Finally, the assumption of criminal organizations behind beggars legitimated the recent criminalization of (aspects of) begging in Western countries, e.g. in Belgium and France. An analysis of existing attempts to measure beggars’ income teaches us that the best design is to triangulate with data from different sources. Three datasets were collected, based on observation, self-reports and quasi-experimental observations. The combination of these datasets allows for more reliable and valid conclusions. The hypotheses based upon popular myths and the assumptions behind the criminalization of begging are dismissed. The evidence does seem to support the hypothesis based upon the literature on informal activities.