Given that 60 per cent of the global workforce is in the informal sector, this article develops a typology that classifies economies according to, firstly, where different countries sit on a continuum of informalization and, secondly, the character of their informal sectors. This is then applied...

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...

For much of the previous century, the informal sector was largely represented as a residue of a previous mode of production confined to marginal populations and gradually disappearing due to the inevitable and natural shift towards the formal economy across the globe. Over the past quarter of a...

For much of the 20th century, the informal economy in advanced western nations was depicted as a leftover from an earlier mode of production and disappearing from view. In recent decades, however, with the recognition that it persists and is even growing, it has been variously re-theorized as...

PurposeThis paper evaluates critically the assumption that the main reason for acquiring domestic services from the off-the-books economy is to save money. MethodologyData is reported from an Internet survey of 5,500 people living in households with one or more members in employment in the city...

In advanced economies, work beyond employment has been viewed very differently depending upon whether it is paid or not. Whilst unpaid work, especially voluntary work, has been perceived as something to be nurtured in order to rebuild trust and reciprocity in communities, paid informal work has...

To evaluate whether and how the prevalence and nature of off-the-books entrepreneurship varies across deprived and affluent neighborhoods in an advanced economy, face-to-face interviews are here reported conducted with 511 households in English affluent and deprived urban neighborhoods. The...

PurposeViewing undeclared work as low-paid exploitative organised employment conducted under sweatshop conditions, public policy has widely treated this illegitimate sphere as a hindrance to development and actively pursued its deterrence using stringent regulations and punitive measures to...

To evaluate the current role of the social economy and how it might be harnessed to supplement public and private sector provision, this article takes the issue of transport provision and examines it in the context of rural England. First, the nature of the rural transport problem in this nation...

Paid informal work has been conventionally viewed as a barrier to social inclusion. Conceived as exploitative low-paid employment conducted by marginalised populations for unscrupulous employers, such work has been considered to prevent social inclusion, in that it denies employees access to the...