A large percentage of workers and firms operate in the informal economy, outside the line of sight of governments in emerging market and developing economies. This may hold back the recovery in these economies from the deep recessions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--unless governments adopt a broad set of policies to address the challenges of widespread informality. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of informality and its implications for a durable economic recovery and for long-term development. It finds that pervasive informality is associated with significantly weaker economic outcomes--including lower government resources to combat recessions, lower per capita incomes, greater poverty, less financial development, and weaker investment and productivity.

This title was first published in 2002. In State socialist societies, informal economies were essential for the functioning of the economy as well as for household provision. Since the beginning of social transformation they have been flourishing better than ever before. They are a main outlet on the market for the newly emerging middle classes, stabilize the situation of many workers and pensioners, and in countries on the downward slope they are essential for the survival of large impoverished groups. Presenting recent research on the social importance of informal economies, especially in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Russia, the editors give a short introduction for each country, and a common compilation of basic economic and social data follows in the appendix. Household strategies in the ’shadow’, groups of informal winners and losers, informal employment in town and countryside, outcomes from informal activities, the macro-economic importance of informal economies, and researching methods are all investigated.

This paper examines the drivers, and reestimates the size of shadow economies in Europe, with a focus on the emerging economies, and recommends policies to increase formality. The size of shadow economies declined across Europe in recent years but remains significant, especially in Eastern Europe. In the emerging European economies, the key determinants of shadow economy size are regulatory quality, government effectiveness, and human capital. The paper argues that a comprehensive package of reforms, focused on country-specific drivers, is needed to successfully combat the shadow economy. The menu of policies most relevant for Europe’s emerging economies include: reducing regulatory and administrative burdens, promoting transparency and improving government effectiveness, as well as improving tax compliance, automating procedures, and promoting electronic payments.

This book presents new data to give an overview of shadow economies from OECD countries and propose solutions to prevent illicit work.

This paper analyses the impact of large and persistent emigration from Eastern European countries over the past 25 years on these countries’ growth and income convergence to advanced Europe. While emigration has likely benefited migrants themselves, the receiving countries and the EU as a whole, its impact on sending countries’ economies has been largely negative. The analysis suggests that labor outflows, particularly of skilled workers, lowered productivity growth, pushed up wages, and slowed growth and income convergence. At the same time, while remittance inflows supported financial deepening, consumption and investment in some countries, they also reduced incentives to work and led to exchange rate appreciations, eroding competiveness. The departure of the young also added to the fiscal pressures of already aging populations in Eastern Europe. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for sending countries to mitigate the negative impact of emigration on their economies, and the EU-wide initiatives that could support these efforts.

Applying the new economics of organisation and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross-national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterise the 'varieties of capitalism' worldwide.

The global financial crisis of recent years and the associated large fiscal deficits and debt levels that have impacted many countries underscores the importance of reliable and timely government statistics and, more broadly, public sector debt as a critical element in countries fiscal and external sustainability. Public Sector Debt Statistics is the first international guide of its kind, and its primary objectives are to improve the quality and timeliness of key debt statistics and promote a convergence of recording practices to foster international comparability and as a reference for national compilers and users for compiling and disseminating these data. Like other statistical guides published by the IMF, this one was prepared in consultation with countries and international agencies, including the nine organizations of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Finance Statistics (TFFS). The guide's preparation was based on the broad range of experience of our institutions and benefitted from consultation with national compilers of government finance and public sector debt statistics. The guide's concepts are harmonized with those of the System of National Accounts (2008) and the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual, Sixth Edition.

A renowned economist argues for the importance of property rights in "the most intelligent book yet written about the current challenge of establishing capitalism in the developing world" (Economist) "The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph," writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of crisis." In The Mystery of Capital, the world-famous Peruvian economist takes up one of the most pressing questions the world faces today: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail? In strong opposition to the popular view that success is determined by cultural differences, de Soto finds that it actually has everything to do with the legal structure of property and property rights. Every developed nation in the world at one time went through the transformation from predominantly extralegal property arrangements, such as squatting on large estates, to a formal, unified legal property system. In the West we've forgotten that creating this system is what allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth. This persuasive book revolutionized our understanding of capital and points the way to a major transformation of the world economy.

Informal economies, growing throughout the 1990s, make a central determinant of social transformation in Eastern Europe. In this book, the various patterns of informal economies and the causes of its growth in Romania are explored from quantitative and qualitative research: the difficult social transformation; informal consumption and labour of households, their incomes, developments and strategies; the impact of informalisation in different branches, related to the Romanian economy as a whole; in the end, comparisons with Eastern European countries are included, and methodological procedure is explained.

A New York roofer requests payment in cash. A Bogota car mechanic sets up "shop" on a quiet side street. Four Mexican immigrants assemble semiconductors in a San Diego home. A Leningrad doctor sells needed medicine to a desperate patient. All are part of a growing worldwide phenomenon that is widely known but little understood. The informal or underground economy is thriving today, not only in the Third World countries where it was first reported and studied but also in Eastern Europe and the developed nations of the West. The Informal Economy is the first book to bring together studies from all three of these settings and to integrate them into a coherent theoretical framework. Taking an international perspective, the authors dispel a number of misconceptions about the informal economy. They make clear, for instance, that it is not solely a province of the poor. Cutting across social strata, it reflects a political and economic realignment between employers and workers and a shift in the regulatory mission of the government. Throughout, the authors' theoretical observations serve not only to unify material from diverse sources but also to map out directions for further research.