EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Rethinking Informal Economy Resilience during Crisis: Experience from COVID-19 Pandemic

Bagas Aditya () and Ikhwan Amri
Additional contact information
Bagas Aditya: The University of Melbourne
Ikhwan Amri: The Graduate School of Universitas Gadjah Mada

The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 2023, vol. 66, issue 3, No 4, 737 pages

Abstract: Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the public health system and socioeconomic sector, one of the worst being the impacts on the informal economy. Despite their past survival, the current pandemic-induced crisis has cast doubt on informal economy resilience. This study aims to capture the informal economy resilience facing the unprecedented economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. We reviewed 42 selected peer-reviewed journal articles to synthesise a general concept of informal economy resilience during pandemic-induced crisis. We found that strict lockdown during a pandemic becomes the main driver that exacerbates the vulnerability of informal economy. The impacts are spatiotemporally varied, different within the group, and have multilevel characteristics (from individual to society). This vulnerable condition has triggered the informal economy to conduct several coping mechanisms to face economic disadvantages. Both individual coping mechanisms and government intervention have altered the informal economy's resilience throughout time. The current combination of defense mechanisms results in four possibilities: bounce back better, bounce back, recover but worsen, and collapse. This review offers valuable insights into the appropriate actions that governments should undertake in response to economic downturns resulting from pandemics. It highlights the importance of considering vulnerable groups when formulating policy during a crisis.

Keywords: Informal Economy; COVID-19; Socio-economic Impacts; Resilience; Crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41027-023-00458-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:ijlaec:v:66:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s41027-023-00458-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/41027

DOI: 10.1007/s41027-023-00458-1

Access Statistics for this article

The Indian Journal of Labour Economics is currently edited by Alakh Sharma

More articles in The Indian Journal of Labour Economics from Springer, The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-12
Handle: RePEc:spr:ijlaec:v:66:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s41027-023-00458-1