Given that 60 per cent of the global workforce is in the informal sector, this article develops a typology that classifies economies according to, firstly, where different countries sit on a continuum of informalization and, secondly, the character of their informal sectors. This is then applied...

To evaluate critically the policy options available for tackling the undeclared economy, this paper commences by evaluating the implications of four hypothetical policy choices, namely doing nothing, de-regulating the declared economy, eradicating the undeclared economy, or moving undeclared...

The starting point of this paper is a recognition that the current deterrence approach towards underground work fails to recognize either the potential asset that enterprise and entrepreneurship in the underground economy represents in western economies or the desire of governments to transfer...

To evaluate the size of the underground sector, numerous measurement methods have been employed ranging from indirect to direct survey approaches. Evaluating critically the range of techniques available, this paper firstly highlights the growing appreciation that direct rather than indirect...

This paper evaluates critically the assumption that entrepreneurs who start-up their business ventures operating wholly or partially off-the-books are engaged in commercial entrepreneurship. Reporting evidence from a 2005-2006 survey involving face-to-face interviews with 298 informal...

This paper evaluates critically the validity of the competing conceptualizations of informal employment that variously read such work as a leftover of a previous mode of production, a by-product of, alternative or complement to formal employment. Until now, the common tendency has been for...

PurposeThis paper evaluates critically the validity of rival theorisations of the hidden economy that variously read this sector as a leftover from some previous era, a by-product of a new emergent form of capitalism, a complement to formal employment or an alternative to the formal economy....

This paper examines the nature of undeclared work in southeast Europe and evaluates the consequences for tackling such work. Reporting a survey of undeclared work in five southeast European countries (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Romania and Slovenia), a diverse array of types of undeclared work...

Until now, participation in undeclared work has been explained through either a structuralist lens as driven by ‘exclusion' from state benefits and the circuits of the modern economy or through a neo-liberal and/or post-structuralist lens as driven by the voluntary ‘exit' of workers out of...

This paper investigates the relationship between entrepreneurship and off-the-books work. Until now, although it has been recognised that a share of off-the-books transactions are conducted by nascent entrepreneurs and the established self-employed, few have evaluated what proportion of...