Informal Economy in Global Perspective

Abel Polese is Senior Researcher at Tallinn University and Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia.Colin C. Williams is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Sheffield, UK.Ioana A. Horodnic is Assistant Professor at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Romania.Predrag Bejakovic is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Public Finance, Croatia.

• Introduction: Informal Economies as Varieties of Governance; Abel Polese, Colin C. Williams, Ioana A. Horodnic and Predrag Bejakovic.- Chapter 1. Why read informality in a substantive manner? On the embeddedness of the Soviet second economy; Lela Rekhviashvili.- Chapter 2. Informal Economy: the invisible hand of government; Abbas Khandan.- Chapter 3. Estimating the size of Croation shadow economy: a labour approach; Sabina Hodzic.- Chapter 4. Informal employment and earnings determination in Ukraine; Oksana Nezhyvenko and Philippe Adai.- Chapter 5. Approaching informality : rear-mirror methodology and ethnographic inquiry; Marius Wamsiedel.- Chapter 6. Explaining the informal economy in post-communities societies: a study of the asymmetry between formal and informal institutions in Romania; Colin C. Williams and Ioana A. Horodnic.- Chapter 7. Post-socialist informality rural style: impressions from Bulgaria; Diana Traikova.- Chapter 8. Exploring the practice of making informal paymentsin the health sector: some lessons from Greece; Adrian V. Horodnic, Colin C. Williams, Abel Polese, Adriana Zaiț and Liviu Oprea.- Chapter 9. Violent pressure on business and the size of the informal economy: evidence from Russian regions; Michael Rochlitz.- Chapter 10. Labor informality in Mexico: an indicator analysis; Rogelio Varela Llamas, Ramón A. Castillo Ponce and Juan Manuel Ocegueda Hernández.- Chapter 11. The interplay between formal and informal firms and its implications on jobs in francophone Africa: case studies of Senegal and Benin; Ahmadou Aly Mbaye, Nancy Claire Benjamin and Fatou Gueye.- Chapter 12. Governing informal payments by market in the Chinese healthcare system; Jingqing Yang.- Chapter 13. Social mechanisms of the counterpublic sphere: a case of a coffee farmers’ cooperative in Lao PDR; Arihiro Minoo.- Chapter 14. Formalisation of entrepreneurship in the informal economy in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) and the role of formal institutions: an analysis of Ghana’s experience; Kwame Adom.- Chapter 15. Evidence on corruption in public procurements in health care and the implications for policy; Julia Schipperges, Milena Pavlova, Tetiana Stepurko, Paul Vincke and Wim Groot.

“The book provides a sound and thorough overview of the complexity of the concept of informal economy, accounting for a high degree of variety in the theories and methodologies adopted, as well as in the countries under consideration. It also shows how economic informality can be a core component of an economic system, often associated to low productivity and erratic revenues, but not necessarily to backwardness.” (Clara Capelli, Interdisciplinary Political Studies, Vol. 4 (2), 2018)