South Africa’s high involuntary unemployment and small informal sector is attributed to an underperforming formal sector and barriers-to-entry in the informal sector. This paper examines the economywide linkages between formal and informal economies while accounting for different types of informal activities. A multi-region empirically-calibrated general equilibrium model is developed capturing...

This discussion paper aims to review what is currently known about the role played by the informal sector in general, and informal retailers in particular, in the accessibility of food in South Africa. The review seeks to identify policy-relevant research gaps. Drawing on Statistics South Africa data, we show that the informal sector is an important source of employment, dominated by informal t...

This paper reports on the results of a research carried out during 1993-94 aiming at studying street sellers as an informal sector activity and a source of socio-economic problems in Shiraz, Iran. This study makes use of two Logit models in order to present a unified framework depiciting the factors that seem to affect the developmeht of informal sector activities. The first model looks at thos...

In an influential article Tornell and Lane (1999) considered an economy, populated by multiple powerful groups, in which property rights in the formal sector are not protected. They argued that then investment in an informal sector may be optimal and set up conditions for “voracity” such that a permanent positive shock in the formal sector leads to lower economic growth. Here I show that whenev...

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In many countries, informal waste pickers contribute significantly to waste management and resource efficiency by collecting, sorting, trading and sometimes even processing waste materials. These activities also provide an income opportunity for large numbers of poor people. GTZ aims to determine the factors for successful informal sector integration in solid waste management systems in order t...

This paper compares hiring and separations over the business cycle in formal and informal labor markets in Brazil. Using a simple model with specificity in employment relationships, the paper shows that the consequences of employment protection can be described by an inverse relationship between the incidence and duration of employment. Employment protection moves labor markets along this curve...