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The aim of this paper is to evaluate contrasting ways of tackling self-employment in the informal sector. Conventionally, the participation of the self-employed in the informal sector has been viewed as a rational economic decision taken when the expected benefits outweigh the costs, and thus enforcement authorities have sought to change the benefit-to-cost ratio by increasing the punishments and chances of being caught. Recently, however, neo-institutional theory has viewed such endeavor as a product of a lack of vertical trust (in government) and horizontal trust (in others) and pursued trust-building strategies to nurture voluntary compliance.

To evaluate these contrasting policy approaches, data are reported from special Eurobarometer survey 92.1 conducted in 2019 across 28 European countries (the 27 member states of the European Union and the United Kingdom) involving over 27,565 interviews.

Using probit regression analysis, the finding is that the likelihood of participation in informal self-employment is not associated with the level of expected punishments and chances of being caught, but is significantly associated with the level of vertical and horizontal trust, with a greater likelihood of participation in informal self-employment when there is lower vertical and horizontal trust.

The outcome is a call for state authorities to shift away from the use of repressive policy measures that increase the penalties and chances of being caught and toward trust-building strategies to nurture voluntary compliance. How this can be achieved is explored.

Evidence is provided to justify a shift toward seeking trust-building strategies by state authorities to engender voluntary compliance among the self-employed operating in the informal sector in Europe.

This paper aims at assessing the impact of a number of behavioral interventions on the willingness of informal businesses, in the Egyptian informal sector, to join the formal sector.

This paper uses an experimental methodology to examine the impact of behavioral interventions on the formalization of the Egyptian informal sector. Specifically, it conducts a survey experiment on a total of 240 informal businesses, operating in the Egyptian informal sector. The primary data collected from the survey experiment is then analyzed using a binary logistic regression to assess the impact of the behavioral primes on the probability of joining the formal market.

The empirical findings of the survey experiment indicate that the biggest obstacle facing informal businesses is finding a formal source of finance that could help them in penetrating the market. Providing informal businesses with information on funding opportunities offered by the ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) significantly increased the probability of joining the formal sector to benefit from this opportunity.

This paper is the first to apply behavioral primes, in the form of informational cues, to the Egyptian case of informal business owners. Previous research on the use of behavioral nudges and primes has focused mainly on the western economies.

Motivated by a lack of evidence regarding the effect of migration on entrepreneurship in a highly informal country, such as Colombia, this paper has a twofold purpose. First, it explores how Venezuelan immigration affects entrepreneurial activity in Colombian regions. Second, it intends to shed light on this relationship, by distinguishing between formal and informal sectors.

With a sample of 1,776,063 individuals, from the Labor Survey Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares (GEIH) from the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE), the authors employ an instrumental variable approach to account for the selection of immigrants into locations with more or less desirable conditions.

The results suggest Venezuelan immigration positively influences self-employment and own-account workers, but negatively affects employers. However, once these immigrants proliferate in the informal sector, the effects increase.

This paper brings new insights into the intersection between immigration, unofficial economies, and entrepreneurship. First, while the prior literature focuses on migration from developing to developed countries, migratory flows between developing economies and its effects on local entrepreneurial activity remain unexplored. Second, although informality is mostly common in developing countries, little (albeit growing) evidence of its role in the relationship between migration and entrepreneurship research exists. Finally, the authors bring together these two phenomena to enhance our understanding of different types of entrepreneurial activities when immigration and informality take place. Policy implications are derived from these insights.

Scholars and practitioners increasingly recognize data as an important source of business opportunities, but research on the effect on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is limited. This paper empirically examines the complementary impact of SMEs' data capability and supply chain capability (SCC) and further tests the mediation effect of SCC between data capability and operational performance. The mediated effect of data capability is also moderated by competition.

This paper analyzes longitudinal data collected from 122 manufacturing SMEs in Finland. Hypotheses were tested by using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results show that to benefit from the data capability, SMEs require a certain level of SCC to extract the value from the SMEs' data capability and support operational performance. Additionally, competition affects how SMEs benefit from data capability, as competitor turbulence moderates the complementary effect of data capability and SCC on operational performance.

This is one of the first studies examining the longitudinal effect of SMEs' data and SCC on operational performance in the current competitive environment.

The purpose of this study is to determine how sonic logo’s acoustic features (intensity, pitch and pace) based on melodic tunes with no voice orient the response of consumers, attract attention, elicit levels of pleasantness and calmness and transmit brand personality traits.

A within-subject experimental factorial design is applied to measure emotional arousal (indexed as electrodermal activity) and enhancement on perceptual processing (indexed as heart rate), as well as self-reported factors, namely, calmness/excitement, pleasantness and brand personality scales.

Results show a significant increase on electrodermal activity associated with fast-paced sonic logos and a decrease in heart rate in slow-paced long sonic logos. Also, fade-up, pitch-ascending fast sonic logos are defined as more exciting and descending-pitch sonic logos as more pleasant.

The use of sonic logos with no voice does limit its implications. Besides, the use of three variables simultaneously with 18 versions of sonic logos in a laboratory setting may have driven participants to fatigue; hence, findings should be cautiously applied.

First, sonic logos are best processed in a fade-up form. Second, fast pace is recommended to orient response, whereas slow pace is recommended to transmit calmness. Practitioners may opt for fast-paced sonic logos if the design is new or played in a noisy environment and opt for slow-paced sonic logos in already highly recognized sound designs.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to combine psychophysiological measures and self-reported scales in a laboratory experiment on how sonic logo’s acoustic features orient response, transmit emotions and personality traits.

This paper adds to the ongoing debate on judgements, opportunity evaluation and founder identity theory and shows that founders vary in their prioritisation and combination of judgement criteria, linked to their respective social founder identity. It further reveals how this variation among founder identity types shapes their perception of distinct entrepreneurial opportunities and the forming of first-person opportunity beliefs.

This study uses a qualitative approach by presenting three business scenarios to a sample of 34 first-time founders. It adopts a first-person perspective on their cognitive processes during the evaluation of entrepreneurial opportunities using verbal protocol and content analysis techniques.

The theorised model highlights the use of similar categories of judgement criteria by individual founders during opportunity evaluation that followed two distinct stages, namely search and validation. Yet, founders individualised their judgement process through the prioritisation of different judgement criteria.

The authors provide new insights into how individuals individuate entrepreneurial opportunities through the choice of different judgement criteria that enable them to develop opportunity confidence during opportunity evaluation. The study also shows that first-time founders depict variations in their cognitive frames that are based on their social identity types as they assess opportunity-related information and elicit variations in reciprocal relationships emerging between emotion and cognition. Exposing these subjective cognitive evaluative processes provides theoretical and practical implications that are discussed as well.

This chapter reviews successful pedagogical interventions in teaching literacy in languages of teaching and learning in the upper primary grades in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and explores how researchers and teachers decolonized classroom spaces to ensure student achievement of learning outcomes. Themes emerging from the analysis of data are biliteracy interventions, interventions in official and national languages, teacher professional development, and ecological interventions. Results of the review indicate that researchers decolonized classroom spaces by using student linguistic repertoires, evidence-based pedagogical strategies student cultural capital and engaging families and communities. The review also reveals that more research needs to be conducted on teaching and learning in upper primary grades. The linguistic diversity of LMICs provides rich contexts for more research in bilingual education and L2 acquisition which could be useful worldwide as stakeholders in the education process explore the best ways to improve learning outcomes in schools.