The lingering policy dilemma facing many governments in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years is what can be done in the short to medium term to boost the output and incomes of individuals and enterprises in the informal sector, given the size and persistence of the sector in the region. In this...

Sub-Saharan African economies have experienced accelerated economic growth in the past two decades. In this paper we study the impact of trade-induced structural change on employment and value-added shares in sub-Saharan African economies. We find that sub-Saharan African economies have...

In this paper we analyse informal work in Mexico, which accounts for the majority of employment in the country and has grown over time. We document that the informal sector is composed of two distinct parts: salaried informal employment and self-employment. Relative to self-employment and formal...

The Indian labour market is characterized by a high level of informality, with large numbers of workers in poorly paid 'lower-tier' informal jobs, and somewhat better paid 'uppertier' informal jobs, which do not have the same benefits and security of tenure as formal jobs. We examine the...

We examine the nature of labour market inequality in Indonesia and India, using a common conceptual approach drawing from the job ladder framework. In the framework, we differentiate between self-employment and wage-informal and between formal, upper tier informal, and lower tier informal jobs....