Explaining informal entrepreneurship in Croatia: a social actor approach

Colin Williams and Slavko Bezeredi

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2021, vol. 42, issue 3, 348-368

Abstract: In recent years, a social actor approach has emerged to explain informal sector entrepreneurship. Grounded in institutional theory, this asserts that formal institutional failures lead entrepreneurs to view participation in the informal sector as acceptable, which results in the prevalence of informal entrepreneurship. The aim of this paper is to evaluate this social actor approach. Reporting the results of 521 face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative sample of entrepreneurs in Croatia, this finds a significant association between entrepreneurs participation in the informal economy and the non-alignment of their views with the formal rules, and that the formal institutional failings significantly associated with the acceptability of informal entrepreneurship include their perception of poor quality public services, a lack of tax fairness, corruption and political instability. The implications for theory and policy are then discussed.

Keywords: informal economy; shadow economy; underground economy; entrepreneurship; tax morale; institutional theory; transition economies; Croatia. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=113206 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijesbu:v:42:y:2021:i:3:p:348-368

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().