This paper presents results from a field experiment designed to test whether savings constraints prevent the self-employed from increasing the size of their businesses. We opened interest-free savings accounts in a local village bank in rural Kenya for a randomly selected sample of poor daily...

This paper presents results from a field experiment designed to test whether savings constraints prevent the self-employed from increasing the size of their businesses. We opened interest-free savings accounts in a local village bank in rural Kenya for a randomly selected sample of poor daily...

We examine the earnings determinants of the self-employed and wage earners in Hungary in the mid-1990's, taking into account two forms of selection: selection into working or non-working for every individual in our sample and selection into self-employment or wage-earning jobs for workers only....

This paper introduces a comprehensive database of informal economic activity. The database focuses on measures that have strong cross-country and over time coverage: it includes both model-based and survey-based measures of informality and covers more than 160 economies for the period 1990-2018....

We study the degree of synchronization between formal- and informal-economy business cycles. Using a comprehensive database of informal activity that covers a wide range of informality measures from almost 160 countries over the 1990-2018 period, we report two major results. First, fluctuations...

We estimate the determinants of earnings for both the self-employed and wage/salary sectors in an economy undergoing transition from socialism to greater market orientation. We adopt a (full information) MLE methodology in addition to Heckman's two-step method, while taking both participation...