Informal Self-Employment in Kazakhstan

Perceptions of Craftsmen and Apprentices Regarding Self-employment Skill Acquisition in the Kenyan Informal Sector

In recent years, the Government of Kenya has embarked on a new economic development strategy which emphasizes job creation in the informal sector through self-employment and apprenticeship training (Republic of Kenya, 1986). Informal apprenticeship training takes place at ordinary workplaces in the informal sector and makes production tasks part of the instruction as a means for acquiring techn...

Determinants of Income in Informal Self-employment: New Evidence from a Long African Panel*

This article investigates the returns to workers’ productive assets, in the form of physical capital, human capital and labour, in an African labour market. We specify a model for the income-generating process grounded in the literature on firms’ production technology, hence abridging the gap between the analysis of individual earnings and the study of firms’ value added. Identification in the ...

Employment and social protectionin the informal sector

Regional Variation in Informal Employment: Skills, Norms, and Governance*

Informal economic activity across countries has been studied thoroughly in the empirical literature, but little research addresses the sources of variation in informality on the sub-national level. This paper analyzes reasons for regional variation in informal employment. It develops a theoretical model, which predicts that worker skill endowment, quality of local governance, and social norms a...

Labor Standards and Informal Employment in Latin America

— This paper addresses the hypothesis that higher labor standards––in particular freedom of association and collective bargaining rights––and higher wages in the formal sector reduce employment in that sector and thereby contribute to the informalization of employment. This issue is explored using panel data on specific categories of formal and informal employment for 14 Latin American countrie...