Annotation.

Papers from a seminar held at the Development Centre on September 7-9, 1988. Includes bibliographical references (p. 210-223).

Although entrepreneurship in the informal economy occurs outside state regulatory systems, informal commercial activities account for an estimated 30% of economic activity around the world. Informal entrepreneurship goes unmonitored despite the fact that it significantly contributes to poverty reduction and economic development. As a result, the informal sector is open to unethical practices including corruption, worker exploitation, and natural environment abuse to name just a few. In the media, debates have formed around whether informal entrepreneurship should be assisted or legitimized. Hence, a deep understanding of the phenomenon is vitally important. This book is the first on the market to offer models and approaches to informal entrepreneurship as well as to its prospects for economic development. Offering an in-depth examination of informal entrepreneurship in many different countries, it reveals the motivations for engaging in entrepreneurship in the informal economy, characteristics of informal entrepreneurship, and informal entrepreneurs' response to ethical issues. This volume illustrates the relationship between formal and informal economies and the conditions for the benefits of informal entrepreneurship to outweigh its disadvantages. And finally, it gives recommendations about when and how the informal economy can be formalized, which sectors should be formalized, and which ones can remain informal. This book offers much-needed guidance for stakeholders involved in economic development programs and scholars and entrepreneurs interested in the field of informal entrepreneurship as it is developing around the globe.

This book provides a framework to understand the disregarded aspect of emerging market growth which is informal employment. Informal employment in unregistered enterprises or of workers without employment contracts or social protection contributions constitutes 88 per cent of employment in India and is a ubiquitous feature of the economy. A large proportion of informal employment (86 per cent) is self-employment and this category of employment has been neglected in the literature on work and development which has focused instead on wage employment that is a contract for work with another person or enterprise. Another striking feature of such economies which the book engages with is that, as they have liberalized, informal employment in the registered enterprises or formal part of the economy has grown. The informal sector has been analyzed by recourse to two major approaches. One is a public economics framework that underlines how informal enterprises evolve as they trade-off reduced access to public services such as contract enforcement with the payment of taxes and regulatory compliances. This book extends this literature by focusing on the access to formal sector credit and its potential for financing productive enterprises as a factor that is considered when an enterprise contemplates whether to incorporate or not. The second leg of the literature takes a labour perspective and emphasizes mandated labour costs such as hiring and firing costs, benefits, and minimum wages as considerations when deciding on whether to engage labour on a formal or informal basis. The book broadens this literature by taking into account how the human capital of workers and the monitoring costs of ensuring that workers are adhering to the terms of negotiated contracts inform the decision with regard to informality. The book will resonate with those academics and policy makers who are engaged with the conundrums of development.

This Modern Guide presents a comprehensive synthesis of contemporary thought on the informal economy, which, as the author demonstrates – far from being a peripheral feature of the global economy – is a system in which the majority of the global workforce are employed and which has pervasive detrimental effects. Formalising it is therefore a priority for most governments.

Street trade is a critical and highly visible component of the informal economy, linked to global systems of exchange. Yet policy responses are dismissive and evictions commonplace. Despite being progressively marginalised from public space, street traders in the global south are engaged in spatial and political battlegrounds to reclaim space, and claim de facto property rights over their place of work, through quiet infiltration, union power, or direct action. This book explores 'rebel streets', the challenges faced by informal economy actors and how organised groups are seeking to reframe legal understandings to create new claims to space and urban rights. The book sets out new thinking and a conceptual framework for improved understanding of the plural relationship between law, rights, and space for the informal economy, the contest between traditional, modernist and rights-based approaches to development, and impacts on the urban working poor. With a focus on street trading, the book seeks to reframe the legal context in which modern informal economies operate, drawing on key areas of academic inquiry and case studies of how vendors are staking claim to urban rights. The book argues for a reconceptualisation of legal instruments to provide a rights-based framework for urban work that recognises the legitimacy of urban informal economies, the scope for collective management of urban resources, and the social value of public space as a site for urban livelihoods. It will be of interest to students and scholars of geography, economics, urban studies, development studies, political studies and law.

"An International Center for Economic Growth publication." Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-235) and index.