Over the past decade or so, there has been widespread recognition that a large and growing proportion of the global workforce is employed in informal sector enterprises. To explain this, neo-liberals contend that enterprises operate in the informal sector due to high taxes, public sector...

This book evaluates the contributions that consumer services can make to local economic development and revitalisation. It examines a broad range of consumer services and detailed case studies illustrate their role in various contexts

Over the past decade or so, there has been widespread recognition that a large and growing proportion of the global workforce is employed in informal sector enterprises. To explain this, neo-liberals contend that enterprises operate in the informal sector due to high taxes, public sector...

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 seeks to contribute to the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate critically the competing theories of informal entrepreneurship that variously represent such endeavour as a residue from a previous mode of accumulation (modernisation theory), a direct by‐product of contemporary capitalism and survival...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper os to reveal the complex characteristics of informal employment and the difficulties of implementing policies to counteract this phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach – Sections 1 and 2 review different theories on the causes and effects of informal...

Purpose – A recurring assumption across the social sciences is that non-commodified work has been increasingly replaced by the commodified sphere in which goods and services are produced and delivered for monetary exchange by capitalist firms for profit-motivated purposes. The purpose of this...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate critically the meta-narrative that capitalism is becoming totalising and hegemonic. Grounded in an emerging corpus of post-development thought that has deconstructed this discourse in relation to western economies and the majority (third)...

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate 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. Design/methodology/approach – Face‐to‐face interviews...

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate critically the conventional binary hierarchical representation of the formal/informal economy dualism which reads informal employment as a residual and marginal sphere that has largely negative consequences for economic development and needs to be...