The economics of the informal sector : a simple model and some empirical evidence from Latin America
Author: Norman A. Loayza
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Published: 1997
Total Pages: 60
ISBN-13:
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Economic Informality
Author: Ana Maria Oviedo
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Published: 2009-06-01
Total Pages: 54
ISBN-13: 0821379976
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis survey assembles recent theoretical and empirical advances in the literature on economic informality and analyzes the causes and costs of informality in developed and developing economies. Using recent evidence, the survey discusses the nature and roots of informal economic activity across countries, distinguishing between informality as the result of exclusion and exit. The survey provides an extensive review of recent international experience with policies aimed at reducing informality, in particular, policies that facilitate the formalization process, create a framework for the transition from informality to formality, lend support to newly created firms, reduce or eliminate inconsistencies across regulation and government agencies, increase information flows, and increase enforcement.
Informality
Author: Guillermo Perry
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 0821370936
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAnalyzes informality in Latin America, exploring root causes and reasons for and implications of its growth. This book uses two distinct but complementary lenses. It concludes that reducing informality levels and overcoming the "culture of informality" will require actions to increase aggregate productivity in the economy.
The Shadow Economy
Author: Friedrich Schneider
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013-02-14
Total Pages: 225
ISBN-13: 1107034841
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book presents new data to give an overview of shadow economies from OECD countries and propose solutions to prevent illicit work.
The Informal Economy in Sub-Saharan Africa
Author: Leandro Medina
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Published: 2017-07-10
Total Pages: 31
ISBN-13: 1484309030
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe multiple indicator-multiple cause (MIMIC) method is a well-established tool for measuring informal economic activity. However, it has been criticized because GDP is used both as a cause and indicator variable. To address this issue, this paper applies for the first time the light intensity approach (instead of GDP). It also uses the Predictive Mean Matching (PMM) method to estimate the size of the informal economy for Sub-Saharan African countries over 24 years. Results suggest that informal economy in Sub-Saharan Africa remains among the largest in the world, although this share has been very gradually declining. It also finds significant heterogeneity, with informality ranging from a low of 20 to 25 percent in Mauritius, South Africa and Namibia to a high of 50 to 65 percent in Benin, Tanzania and Nigeria.
Informality Trends and Cycles
Author: Norman Loayza
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 37
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis paper studies the trends and cycles of informal employment. It first presents a theoretical model where the size of informal employment is determined by the relative costs and benefits of informality and the distribution of workers' skills. In the long run, informal employment varies with the trends in these variables, and in the short run it reacts to accommodate transient shocks and to close the gap that separates it from its trend level. The paper then uses an error-correction framework to examine empirically informality's long- and short-run relationships. For this purpose, it uses country-level data at annual frequency for a sample of industrial and developing countries, with the share of self-employment in the labor force as the proxy for informal employment. The paper finds that, in the long run, informality is larger in countries that have lower GDP per capita and impose more costs to formal firms in the form of more rigid business regulations, less valuable police and judicial services, and weaker monitoring of informality. In the short run, informal employment is found to be counter-cyclical for the majority of countries, with the degree of counter-cyclicality being lower in countries with larger informal employment and better police and judicial services. Moreover, informal employment follows a stable, trend-reverting process. These results are robust to changes in the sample and to the influence of outliers, even when only developing countries are considered in the analysis.
The Long Shadow of Informality
Author: Franziska Ohnsorge
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Published: 2022-02-09
Total Pages: 397
ISBN-13: 1464817545
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA large percentage of workers and firms operate in the informal economy, outside the line of sight of governments in emerging market and developing economies. This may hold back the recovery in these economies from the deep recessions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--unless governments adopt a broad set of policies to address the challenges of widespread informality. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of informality and its implications for a durable economic recovery and for long-term development. It finds that pervasive informality is associated with significantly weaker economic outcomes--including lower government resources to combat recessions, lower per capita incomes, greater poverty, less financial development, and weaker investment and productivity.
The Economics of the Informal Sector
Author: Norman Loayza
Publisher:
Published: 2016
Total Pages: 60
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn increase in the size of the informal sector hurts growth by reducing the availability for public services for everyone in the economy and increasing the number of activities that use some existing public services less efficiently or not at all.Loayza presents the view that informal economies arise when governments impose excessive taxes and regulations that they are unable to enforce. Loayza studies the determinants and effects of the informal sector using an endogenous growth model whose production technology depends essentially on congestable public services. In this model, changes (in both policy parameters and the quality of government institutions) that promote an increase in the relative size of the informal economy will also generate a reduction in the rate of economic growth.Using data from Latin American countries in the early 1990s, Loayza tests some of the model's implications and estimates the size of the informal sector in these countries - identifying the size of the informal sector to latent variable for which multiple causes and indicators exist. The results suggest that:The size of the informal sector depends positively on proxies for tax burden and restrictions on the labor market.It depends negatively on a proxy for the quality of government institutions.An increase in the size of the informal sector hurts growth by reducing the availability of public services for everyone in the economy and by increasing the number of activities that use some existing public services less efficiently or not at all.This paper - a product of the Macroeconomics and Growth Division, Policy Research Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to examine the determinants of economic growth.
Law and Employment
Author: James J. Heckman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2007-11-01
Total Pages: 585
ISBN-13: 0226322858
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLaw and Employment analyzes the effects of regulation and deregulation on Latin American labor markets and presents empirically grounded studies of the costs of regulation. Numerous labor regulations that were introduced or reformed in Latin America in the past thirty years have had important economic consequences. Nobel Prize-winning economist James J. Heckman and Carmen Pagés document the behavior of firms attempting to stay in business and be competitive while facing the high costs of complying with these labor laws. They challenge the prevailing view that labor market regulations affect only the distribution of labor incomes and have little or no impact on efficiency or the performance of labor markets. Using new micro-evidence, this volume shows that labor regulations reduce labor market turnover rates and flexibility, promote inequality, and discriminate against marginal workers. Along with in-depth studies of Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Jamaica, and Trinidad, Law and Employment provides comparative analysis of Latin American economies against a range of European countries and the United States. The book breaks new ground by quantifying not only the cost of regulation in Latin America, the Caribbean, and in the OECD, but also the broader impact of this regulation.
Economics of the Informal Sector
Author: Norman Loayza
Publisher:
Published: 1999
Total Pages:
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFebruary 1997 An increase in the size of the informal sector hurts growth by reducing the availability for public services for everyone in the economy and increasing the number of activities that use some existing public services less efficiently or not at all. Loayza presents the view that informal economies arise when governments impose excessive taxes and regulations that they are unable to enforce. Loayza studies the determinants and effects of the informal sector using an endogenous growth model whose production technology depends essentially on congestable public services. In this model, changes (in both policy parameters and the quality of government institutions) that promote an increase in the relative size of the informal economy will also generate a reduction in the rate of economic growth. Using data from Latin American countries in the early 1990s, Loayza tests some of the model's implications and estimates the size of the informal sector in these countries - identifying the size of the informal sector to latent variable for which multiple causes and indicators exist. The results suggest that: * The size of the informal sector depends positively on proxies for tax burden and restrictions on the labor market. * It depends negatively on a proxy for the quality of government institutions. * An increase in the size of the informal sector hurts growth by reducing the availability of public services for everyone in the economy and by increasing the number of activities that use some existing public services less efficiently or not at all. This paper - a product of the Macroeconomics and Growth Division, Policy Research Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to examine the determinants of economic growth.
