This paper evaluates critically the neo-liberal perspective which contends that informal employment results from high taxes, public sector corruption and too much state interference in the free market and that the consequent remedy is to reduce taxes, public sector corruption and the regulatory...

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...

PurposeProviding support to off-the-books business start-ups to help them make the transition to legitimacy could be a novel and effective method of creating new legitimate business ventures. The aim of this paper is to advance understanding of why some business start-ups operate off-the-books...

The analysis of employment relations needs to include work in the informal economy. For this purpose, we propose a ‘degrees of informalization' framework that evaluates the proportion of employment relations infused with informality and the nature of this permeation. We apply this framework to...

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...

The aim of this introductory article is to provide a critical overview of how informality has been defined and measured, together with selected findings on its extent and character, and a summary of competing views regarding its role in contemporary economies and how it can be tackled. The...

This paper reveals how many formal employees in the European Union receive from their formal employer not only a declared wage but also an additional undeclared (‘envelope') wage. Reporting a 2007 survey involving 26,659 face-to-face interviews, the finding is that 1 in 18 formal employees...

Recent research has revealed that a large proportion of entrepreneurs startup their ventures operating on a wholly or partially off-the-books basis. Until now, it has been commonly assumed that those who operate in the informal economy are exclusively commercial entrepreneurs. They are assumed...