 Theorising Entrepreneurship in the Informal Sector in Urban Brazil: A Product of Exit or Exclusion?Colin Williams and Youssef Youssef Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, 2015, vol. 24, issue 2, 148-168 Abstract: This article evaluates critically the competing explanations for informal sector entrepreneurship that read such endeavours to result from either ‘exclusion’ from state benefits and the circuits of the modern economy or the voluntary ‘exit’ of workers from formal institutions. Reporting evidence from a 2003 survey in urban Brazil, it is revealed that similar proportions of informal sector entrepreneurs explain their participation to result from their involuntary exclusion and voluntary exit from the formal economy. The outcome is a call to shift from an either/or to a both/and approach when explaining informal sector entrepreneurship and for wider research on the relative weightings given to exit and exclusion in different contexts so as to develop a socio-spatially contingent explanation for participation in informal sector entrepreneurship across the globe. Keywords: entrepreneurship; micro-enterprise; small businesses; enterprise culture; informal sector; underground economy; shadow economy; Brazil (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jouent:v:24:y:2015:i:2:p:148-168 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies from Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India |
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