This paper argues that an adequate understanding of Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa requires consideration of not only the economic role of the informal sector, but also its political role. The principal theses are that: (a) The failure of the formal sector in many African countries to contribute to economic growth with equity has been due to its largely static and inflexible character; (b) Dy...

In this paper, I investigate the relationship between informal sector size and various institutional quality variables: government stability, external conflict, internal corruption control, military influence over politics, religious tensions, ethnic law-and-order, democratic quality, bureaucratic accountability. To end, use annual cross-country panel data covering 130 countries from 1990 to 20...

This paper examines the impact of minimum wage legislation in developing countries where coverage is incomplete. Using a rich data set from Ghana, it estimates the extent to which a binding minimum wage alters employment in both the formal and informal sectors of the labor market. The data reveal that Ghana’s minimum wage policies during the 1970s and 1980s led to a reduction of formal sector j...

OBJECTIVES The informal sector is the dominant area of employment and the economy for any developing country including Bangladesh. The cost of productivity loss due to absence from work or presenteeism with illness has rarely been examined in the Bangladesh context. This current study, therefore, attempted to examine the impact of ill health of informal sector workers on labor productivity, fut...

Empirical evidence suggests that the size of the informal sector in the developing countries has increased considerably during the liberalized economic regime. The present paper purports to analyze the consequences of economic reforms on the wellbeing of the informal sector workforce using a three-sector general equilibrium model with two informal sectors. The theoretical analysis finds that di...

The adoption of a new international definition for the informal sector has given a great impetus to methods of estimation and surveys of this sector in the various regions of the world. Global figures on size (in terms of numbers involved and share of labour force) and contribution (in terms of output, value added, income and share of GDP) have by now been made available for a number of countri...

It was generally understood during the 1960s and 1970s that, with economic growth, the informal economy would shrink. But despite strong global growth that coincided with a massive increase in international trade, many jobs in developing countries remain in the informal economy. The share of employment in the informal economy has been persistent in many developing countries over recent decades ...

BACKGROUND Universal health coverage (UHC) is important in terms of improving access to quality health care while protecting households from the risk of catastrophic health spending and impoverishment. However, progress to UHC has been hampered by the measures to increase mandatory prepaid funds especially in low- and middle-income countries where there are large populations in the informal sec...