Purpose – In the majority (third) world, informal employment has been long viewed as an asset to be harnessed rather than a hindrance to development. The purpose of this paper is to show how a similar perspective is starting to be embraced in advanced economies and investigates the...

Purpose – To measure the size of underground economy and the amount of tax evasion in Cyprus by employing monetary and non‐monetary approaches over the period 1960‐2003 and to compare the Cyprus figures with some European experience existing in the literature. Design/methodology/approach...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper os to reveal the complex characteristics of informal employment and the difficulties of implementing policies to counteract this phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach – Sections 1 and 2 review different theories on the causes and effects of informal...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine migrants working as inter‐cultural mediators at the interface of the formal and informal economies in southern Italy so as to question the conventional representation of knowledge workers. Design/methodology/approach – Ethnographic evidence...

Purpose – Since the late 1980s, much attention has been afforded to the notion of social exclusion and how governments might address this problem. One such solution has been the encouragement of self employment amongst those considered to be socially excluded with the aim of creating...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate who engages in informal work. The intention in doing so is to analyse whether important causal factors of social exclusion such as age, education, gender and employment status influence participation in informal work in the European Union....