Showing papers on "Informal sector published in 1989"

The Insider-Outsider Theory of Employment and Unemployment

Abstract: This book provides an accessible, balanced account of the insider-outsider theory of labor market activity. It focuses on how "insiders" (incumbent employees whose jobs are protected by various labor turnover costs) get market power, what they do with that power, and how their activities affect the "outsiders" (who are either unemployed or work in the informal sector). The book examines the effects of insiders' activities on wages, employment, and unemployment; discusses the associated policy implications; and relates the insider-outsider theory to other theories of labor market activity. The central part of the book consists of a series of previously published articles that have been edited to convey a single coherent account of the insider-outsider theory. Chapters are preceded by overviews summarizing the main ideas and relating them to the book's underlying theme.

Latin American urbanization during the years of the crisis.

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to review recent trends in the process of urbanization in major Latin American cities. Particular attention is paid to accelerating primacy the spatial polarization of social classes and high levels of informal employment. The author also explores the extent to which these characteristics are peculiar to Latin America and whether they are common throughout the region or are specific to certain countries. (EXCERPT)

Training for work in the informal sector

Abstract: This volume of essays and case studies is mainly the result of a workshop for experts on training in the informal sector of developing countries held in Turin, 7-11 April, 1987. The workshop was jointly organised by the ILO’s Vocational Training Branch and the ILO’s International Centre for Advanced Technical and Vocational Training.

Bending the bars of the iron cage: Bureaucratization and informalization in capitalism and socialism

Abstract: Despite some important similarities, capitalism's informal economy and socialism's second economy are not functional equivalents or structural counterparts. An informal economy is the product of efforts to circumvent accountability to the explicit rationalizations of regulatory bureaucratization. It operates according to principles disparate from those of the rules of internal labor markets but congruent with the market principles that coordinate the formal economy. In the centrally planned economies of state socialism where informalization responds to the contradictions of redistributive bureaucratization, the embryonic market relations of the second economy are incongruent with the bureaucratic principles that coordinate the formal economy, and in fact, stimulate the institutionalization of transactive market relations and the expansion of property rights inside the socialist enterprise. As a sphere of activity relatively autonomous from the state, the second economy is a source of fundamental change remaking the economic institutions of socialism.

Making the case for the gender variable: women and the wealth and well-being of nations

Abstract: Women are essential to social and economic development because of womens income generation productivity and educational attainment that impacts on health fertility and economic growth. Womens productive activities and womens control of their earned income also yield an impact on development. This monograph provides empirical support for these assertions. The United States is given as an example of a country where growth as a world economic power was made possible by womens work. Womens income as the proportion of national income per capita exceeded growth in male earnings by 28% during 1890-1980. Labor force participation rates of women aged 15-64 years increased from 19.6% to 59.9%. Most of womens direct contribution to national income was during 1950-80 and their indirect contribution was through low-wage work as teachers which increased the skill level of the labor force and thus national income. In the developing world those countries that relied on women industrial workers for export goods made the greatest gains in wealth. Rural African women are engaged in low-resource farming small-scale trading and 80% of subsistence food production. Southeastern and Eastern Asian women are involved in agriculture market trading and industrial employment. Latin American women migrate to urban areas for work in the informal sector. Womens economic activity rates are lowest in South Asia North Africa and the Middle East. "If womens unpaid work were given economic value it would add an estimated 33% or $4 trillion to the worlds annual economic product." National accounts do not include the value of womens unpaid activities in provision of subsistence food and family labor. In 1980 women were 32% of the measured labor force in the world and 26.5% of the industrial labor force compared to 20% in 1960. In Hong Kong women represent 50% of paid manufacturing employees. In processing zones in Asia and Latin America women hold 80% of the 1 million jobs. Womens contributions have been obscured by the housewife stereotype which casts them as unproductive domestic workers by the lack of inclusion in formal statistics of informal work and female-controlled income within the household and by the lack of statistical inclusion of housewife tasks in agricultural production and sales.

‘Barriers’ to the growth of informal sector firms: A case study

Abstract: Between 1960 and 1974, in the Punjab, Pakistan, many artisan units entered the production of small capacity tubewells. However, having reached a certain stage, even the largest and the most enterprising of these firms were unable to expand any further. This study, seeks to identify the factors that prevented their further growth. The article directs attention to the inability of the informal enterprise to adopt techniques that are essential for growth beyond a certain stage. The main source of this weakness lies in the fact that many of the skills associated with the use of these techniques are necessarily acquired through formal educational and training channels. The inability to expand beyond a certain stage is, therefore, identified with the inability to cross over into the modern sector. The barrier’ lies in the social and economic background of the informal firm's owner‐manager which limits his capacity to absorb and attract through the market skills and resources needed to adopt the necessary techni...

Urban Markets: Developing Informal Retailing

Abstract: 1. Introduction: Urban Markets and Informal Sector Stimulation 2. Urban Markets: Some Issues Relating to their Location, Design and Administration 3. The Empirical Foundation 4. Market Cases.

Women and the Changing Urban Household Economy in Tanzania

Abstract: Women in Tanzania's largest city, Dar es Salaam, used to be described as ‘relatively inactive’ as regards paid work or self-employment. 1 One study undertaken in 1971 found that only one-fifth of urban women were either working for wages (13 per cent) or earning their own sources of income (7 per cent). 2 The situation could not have been more different in the late 1980s, with as many as 66 per cent in Dar es Salaam being self-employed. Although about the same proportion of women were in some kind of paid employment as during the previous decade, it appeared that since then many of them had been leaving their place of work to farm and to engage in small income-generating projects, known as miradi midogo midogo or shughuli ndogo ndogo in Kiswahili 3 .

Informal Practices, Flexible Firms and Private Labour Markets

Abstract: Interest in informal recruitment methods, and workers' informal job search and acquisition methods, has increased since the recession began. Although evidence (for example, the General Household Survey) does not suggest that the recession has led to a general increase in employers' use of informal methods, significant advances have been made in the theory of informal practices. These ideas are tested against some new evidence from South Wales, and the results are incorporated into a simple model of informal practices which introduces the idea of a `private labour market'. The model suggests that some `recruitment' methods are best seen as contingent and sometimes as the absence of recruitment methods. Finally, the importance of the various stimuli to change in informal practices is considered in the light of the GHS and South Wales evidence.

Improving womens access to credit in Latin America and the Caribbean: policy and project recommendations.

Abstract: Disappointing results from growth and output-oriented development policies during the 1970s led to more focused attention on employment and earnings expansion in small-scale enterprises subsistence agriculture and the urban informal sector. These programs included the provision of credit among other tools of development. Credit served to improve the growth and profit of small businesses. Formal sector financial institutions did not effectively serve the small borrower the illiterate and the politically powerless. Womens access to credit in the formal system was found to be restricted. A growing movement of women into employment in the informal sector makes it very important that women have adequate financing. One of the major problems for small informal operators is the lack of capital which prevents being able to buy in quantity discounts for raw materials or to have enough cash to meet daily needs. Lack of gender-based data on credit access prevented a thorough evaluation of the severity of the problem. Women operators of small businesses in urban areas confront different credit problems than men do. A study of the Urban Small Enterprise Development Fund found that women received smaller loan amounts than men and had difficulty with collateral excessive paperwork requirements and with credit approval. Without formal credit support women have turned to friends relatives pawnbrokers and personal savings for securing the capital for business ventures. A drawback of informal capital acquisition was the limited amount of credit available. Recently private voluntary groups have implemented credit and income generation programs for the poorest and women. Collateral is secured through solidarity groups and business training courses provide management and accounting skills. A recommendation for improving womens credit was to institute policy changes affecting how financial institutions conduct business. Policy changes would include reform of interest rate policies development of intermediate credit programs and legal reforms.

Education and earnings in Peru's informal nonfarm family enterprises

Abstract: This study presents an analysis of non-farm family businesses in Peru. It uses the enterprise rather than the individual as the unit of analysis, and incorporates enterprise characteristics (capital, nonlabor inputs, focus of operation) explicitly. The central question addressed is: does formal schooling make a difference? Women and children are included in the analysis since thay play an important, if not the preeminent, role in Peru's family business sector. We can thus see whether the payoff to education differs between male and female entrepreneurs after controlling for other factors. The paper proceeds as follows. After the introduction, sections 2 and 3 describe, respectively, the data and the regression model. Section 4 presents the empirical results. Section 5 assesses these results, including those for nonschooling variables, and section 6 discusses the implications with regard to education, comparing our findings with those obtained for some of the same people, considered as individuals, in other analysis.

National development and rural-urban policy: past experience and new directions in Kenya.

Abstract: This paper compares earlier and current approaches to rural-urban development in Kenya since its origins in the development Plan of 1970-74. Whereas, earlier, rural-urban development was treated as a self-contained policy area, it is now regarded as an integral component of national development policy. Primary attention is given not so much to the form of the urban system, but to the functioning of it. While the allocation of investments in physical infrastructure remains a key instrument of policy, others include the promotion of small towns serving rural areas - known as 'Rural Trade and Production Centres', the improvement of delivery systems for public services, and incentives for business, particularly small scale enterprises and informal sector activities.

Training for women in the informal sector

Abstract: In many regions, the informal sector rivals formal wage employment as a source of jobs for men and women. Women however, are disproportionately represented in informal sector occupations. Unable to gain higher level and better paid jobs in the formal sector, they turn to self-employment as a supplement to formal sector earnings as the sole source of income.

Growth and structural change in East Africa : domestic policies, agricultural performance and World Bank assistance, 1963-1986

Abstract: A comparative overview will be presented of domestic policies (macroeconomic and agricultural) in Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania and their influence on the extent and character of agricultural growth. The contribution of the World Bank to agricultural growth in the three countries will then be reviewed, from the perspectives of both policy advice and lending provided by the Bank. The presentation will be based upon the findings of case studies of the Bank's involvement in the three East African countries, carried out under DRD's Managing Agricultural Development in Africa (MADIA) Research Project.

Integrative report on the informal credit markets in the Philippines

Abstract: Utilizing data from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, this study conducts a comparative study of informal markets (ICM). It hopes to cover the major structure of ICMs, the size and its trends and the policy/legal environment. It also discusses the role of ICMs in savings generation, credit consumption, allocation efficiency and equity. How the interest rate is formed in ICM, together with the competition between the formal and informal sectors, the possible role of ICMs and the interlinkage of credit with other markets are analyzed. An optimal legal and policy environment towards the informal sector is offered.

Urban Informal Sector in Pakistan: Some Selected Issues

Abstract: In recent years there has been much conceptual and empirical debate about the status of the informal sector and its role in the development of Third World countries. It was used by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a policy tool for employment promotion, alleviation of poverty and elimination of income inequalities in developing countries [ILO (1972) and Weeks (1975)]. However, there is no dearth of studies which critically examine the informal sector [Bromley (1978); Tokman (1978); Gerry (1978) and Hosier (1987)]. Such studies have generated a fair amount of debate in the literature about the status of the informal sector [Richardson (1984); Moser (1984); House (1985) and Mehta (1985)].1 Based on a recent survey of some selected sub-groups of urban informal activities, this paper is an attempt to examine the status of the urban informal sector in Pakistan. Specifically, it will highlight some of our findings on the characteristics of its participants. The informal sector is defined in this study as representing establishments employing 10 workers or less. The plan of the paper is as follows. Section II gives a description of the survey data and its limitations. Section 1lI presents an empirical investigation of the characteristics and behaviour of the partiCipants. The last Section gives the conclusions of the study.