The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically the gender variations in informal sector entrepreneurship. Until now, a widely-held belief has been that entrepreneurs operating in the informal sector in developing nations are lowly paid, poorly educated, marginalized populations doing so out of...

PurposeFor many decades, European national governments sought to stamp out undeclared work using a repressive approach. In the changing economic context of declining employment participation rates, however, the European Commission has called for a new approach to transform undeclared work into...

Since the turn of the millennium, there has been widespread recognition that the informal economy is a sizeable and growing feature in the global economy. To explain this, neo-liberals have contended that the informal economy is a direct result of over-regulation, high taxes and state...

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the entrepreneurship literature that has sought to deconstruct the normative view of the entrepreneur as a heroic icon of profit-motivated capitalism by developing a typology of the multifarious lived practices of entrepreneurship ranging from wholly...

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....

To evaluate critically the dominant discourse that consumers acquiring goods and services in the informal economy are rational economic actors seeking a lower price, the results of a 2007 Eurobarometer survey involving 26,659 face-to-face interviews in 27 European Union member states form the...

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate the use of personal connections to circumvent formal procedures, known as blat in the Soviet era, in post-Soviet societies by studying its role in graduate employment recruitment. Design/methodology/approach – To do this, the extent to which and how blat...

The aim is to evaluate critically whether small businesses start-up in the informal economy and whether they do so to test-trade the viability of their businesses. Reporting a 2012 survey of 595 small business owners in the UK, 20% report trading informally when starting their business, 64% of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether men and women starting a business use the informal economy and do so to test the viability of their venture. Design/methodology/approach – To do this, the results of a survey of 595 small business owners in the UK conducted in August...

Purpose: Although it has been recognised that many entrepreneurs operate in the informal economy, little is so far known about their reasons for doing so. The aim of this paper is to begin to unravel entrepreneurs’ rationales for trading in the informal economy in order to consider what policy...