Prevalence of the informal economy in global perspective

.

Chapter 4 in A Modern Guide to the Informal Economy, 2023, pp 66-95 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter documents the prevalence of the informal economy across the globe and explains the cross-national variations in its magnitude. Using International Labour Organisation (ILO) harmonised data from national labour force surveys or similar national household surveys, across 112 countries representing 90 per cent of the global workforce, it reveals that 61.2 per cent of the total global workforce are in informal employment as their main job, although this varies across global regions from 85.8 per cent in Africa to 25.1 per cent in Europe and Central Asia. To explain the higher prevalence and intensity of the informal economy in some countries than others, and drawing upon institutionalist theory, this chapter reveals the formal institutional failings that lead to greater institutional asymmetry and a higher prevalence of the informal economy.

Keywords: Business and Management; Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781788975612.00012.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

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:elg:eechap:18668_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().