Purpose Contrary to the view that the subsistence economy is some minor residue persisting in only a few peripheral enclaves of modern economies, the aim of this paper is to begin to chart the importance and prevalence of subsistence work across the contemporary economic landscape and the...

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 whether early-stage entrepreneurs and the established self-employed in rural communities trade off-the-books and whether this tendency varies across deprived and affluent rural localities.MethodologyFace-to-face interviews were conducted with 350 households in both...

Purpose -- Studies on women entrepreneurs either read women through a structuralist lens as marginalised populations engaged in low quality work or through a neo-liberal lens as engaged in relatively higher quality endeavour more as a rational choice. The aim of this paper is to evaluate...

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....

Purpose – Since the turn of the millennium, a small corpus of post-structuralist thought has emerged that challenges the dominant belief that capitalism is now hegemonic and that all economic formations are contrasting varieties of capitalism. This paper contributes to the development of this...

This paper evaluates critically the competing explanations for the persistence and growth of informal employment in contemporary societies. These interpret the normality of informality either through a structuralist lens as arising out of “exclusion” from state benefits and the circuits of...

Participation in street entrepreneurship is variously explained either as a residue from a pre-modern era (modernisation theory), a necessity-driven endeavour and last resort (structuralist theory), a rational economic choice (neo-liberal theory) or conducted for social or lifestyle reasons...

When discussing the motivations of entrepreneurs, it has become commonplace to represent them dichotomously as either necessity or opportunity driven. This paper evaluates critically this dualistic depiction of entrepreneurs' motives through an examination of the rationales of entrepreneurs and...

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...