Large volumes of e-waste collected under formal schemes in high-income countries are still processed informally in developing ones, despite continuous policy efforts to reverse this trend. This paper shows that the persistence of informal e-waste processing is a consequence of how global waste...

This paper examines how incorporating the informal economy influences the estimated benefits of international trade liberalization. Using a structural gravity framework, we quantify the impact of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) while explicitly accounting for the presence of shadow (informal)...

This study investigated the impact of corruption on the persistence of informality across countries, offering new insights into the institutional dynamics that sustain informal economic activities. Drawing on firm-level data from World Bank Enterprise Surveys covering 159 countries, the analysis...

How do minimum wages affect informality? We study the near-doubling of the real minimum wage from 2000 to 2009 in Brazil, where 46% of the workforce is informal. Using labor force surveys covering the informal sector, we show the minimum wage exhibits near full passthrough to informal employees...

How do minimum wages affect informality? We study the near-doubling of the real minimum wage from 2000 to 2009 in Brazil, where 46% of the workforce is informal. Using labor force surveys covering the informal sector, we show the minimum wage exhibits near full passthrough to informal employees...

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new class of information workers, the "information have-less" has risen. This class of workers alleviates the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) revolution on poverty and unemployment. The purpose of this study is to investigate...

India's rapid technological growth has significantly increased electronic consumption, resulting in a surge in electronic waste (e-waste) generation. This working paper examines the complexities of India's e-waste supply chain, focusing on key agents involved, such as collectors, dismantlers,...

The existence of a high percentage of informal labour has a direct impact on the living conditions of millions of people and their families, especially in rural areas and developing countries. The implications of this problem present a challenge for public policy on employment, social security...

Flexible work arrangements (FWAs) are often promoted as a means to regularise informal labour. Utilising unique Italian administrative data that links employer-employee records, daily voucher usage by firms, and randomly timed labour inspections (2014-2017), we demonstrate that FWAs can also...

This paper proposes a new sustainable development index incorporating informality measures for 36 European countries from 2010 to 2022. This index is estimated via a combination of national accounting, macroestimates of informality, and survey data through partial least squares (PLS) regression,...

This paper examines how changes in the minimum wage influence an economy with a substantial informal sector. To achieve this, we simulate the recent minimum wage increase in Latvia, providing a comprehensive assessment of its macroeconomic, sectoral, and distributional effects. This panoptic...

We study how public pensions impact lifecycle labor supply decisions. Our analysis centers on pension eligibility rules in Ecuador. We first use administrative data to document and unpack retirement spikes at eligibility ages. Next, we use survey data and regression discontinuity to investigate...

This paper investigates the causal impact of childbirth on women's likelihood of informal employment in Russia using twenty years of RLMS. We apply an event study framework following Kleven et al. (2019) to quantify child penalties in labour market outcomes and whether women are more likely to...

Considering refugees' employment challenges in their host countries, they often need to create jobs by starting ventures and embracing self-employment. However, this requires financing. This study seeks to assess the roles of formal and informal financing in self-employment while also looking at...