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The aim of this chapter is to advance an understanding of the value of informal entrepreneurial activities in relation to context using an institutional perspective arguing that heterogeneity in institutional embeddedness affects the value individuals attach to entrepreneurial actions.

We draw empirically on 100 interviews with individuals engaged in informal cross-border activities in eight EU border regions across four countries that have experienced changes of regulatory, economic and social nature.

The analysis offers important insights on how three institutional logics – market, state and community – guide entrepreneurial action at the micro-level and affect value creation. Our evidence supports the use of these activities to fulfil important economic functions and to nurture family and social relations in closely-knit communities. Differences in the embeddedness of individuals in each of these logics contributed to their perception of the value of their informal entrepreneurial actions along economic and social dimensions at the individual, community and society level and also at the short and long run.

Our main contributions lie in extending discussions of economic and social value of informal entrepreneurial activities and in providing a dynamic view of the value of informal entrepreneurial activities that account for changes or shifts in institutional logics, the responses they generate and the value created as a result.

This study holds the objective of evaluating the impact of formal (e.g. ease of doing business score, start-up procedures to register a business, property rights) and informal (e.g. school life expectancy, collaboration between companies and human capital) institutions on the economic performance of countries in conjunction with the mediating effect of entrepreneurial activities and social performance.

The authors collected quantitative, secondary data from a range of different sources, specifically the World Bank (WB), Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), World Economic Forum (WEF), Freedom House (FH) and Doing Business (DB) for the years between 2016 and 2018. The authors deployed a quantitative approach based on estimating structural equation models according to the Partial Least Squares (PLS) method.

The authors find that institutions, whether formal or informal, impact positively on economic and social performance with entrepreneurial activities positively mediating the relationship between informal institutions and economic performance and social performance.

The study research holds key implications for strengthening institutional theory. The authors find that our empirical results draw attention to the impact that institutions and their functioning can have on economic performance. Through this alert, the authors aim for researchers, politicians and other diverse decision-makers involved in public policies to prioritise not only the good working of institutions but also fostering entrepreneurship, in order to boost the resulting economic performance.

The study research contributes to the literature by testing the model that links institutions, entrepreneurial activity and economic performance. The authors also help policymakers to become aware of the importance that the quality of institutions has on entrepreneurial activity, and, consequently on economic performance.

To date, limited studies have examined the country-specific social institutions to explain the informal entrepreneurial activities of women, particularly, within the context of the Middle East. This research paper attempts to close this gap through identifying the contextual and personal factors of domestic informal female entrepreneurs (DIFE) within the context of Turkey as a representative case of the Middle East region. The chapter takes national culture as the external context to identify the informal institutions that shape women's informal entrepreneurial activities and uses the Globe Project cultural dimensions to describe the sociocultural context. The qualitative research presented here was conducted with 38 DIFEs who participated in an EU-funded project in Turkey.

The profile of the informal domestic female entrepreneur reflects a middle-aged woman, married with children, literate with a low-level education and a necessity-type entrepreneur at the beginning who gradually evolves into a pull-type sociocultural entrepreneur in time. The findings show that, the perceived sociocultural environment can be categorized as a socially supportive culture – SSC (Hayton and Cacciotti, 2013, p. 713) which is one of the facilitators of informal entrepreneurial activities and creates a fertile and socially legitimized ground for the informal commercial activities of women in Turkey.

Women’s economic empowerment through entrepreneurship is increasingly being recognised as significant to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, women entrepreneurship in developing countries is characterised by an overrepresentation in the informal economy and exposure to high levels of gender disparities. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether formalisation of women’s entrepreneurial activities in the informal economy supports SDGs through ensuring empowerment and equality.

The research adopts a qualitative research design to explore the empowerment outcomes of the formalisation of women’s entrepreneurial activities in the informal economy of Kathmandu, Nepal. Data were collected through interviews with 30 women entrepreneurs engaged in a mix of formal and informal entrepreneurial activities.

By using Mayoux’s (1998) framework of empowerment at the individual, household and community level, the findings show the variation in empowerment outcomes as a result of women’s diverse motivations for engaging in entrepreneurship. Whilst informal entrepreneurial activities improve women’s confidence and life aspirations, they have limited potential in lifting women out of poverty and enable them to significantly challenge gender relations in the society. Formalization does further empower women at the household and community level but this is primarily the case of younger and more educated women.

The research contributes to the debates on entrepreneurship as “emancipation” and more specifically, on whether formalization contributes to the SDGs by furthering gender equality and empowerment. Formalization policies need to acknowledge the heterogeneity of women entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of formal rules such as business regulation and rule of law on the level of formal entrepreneurship in Latin America countries over time.

The authors use the panel regression techniques to examine the influence of business regulation and rule of law on formal entrepreneurship. In particular, they implement together two alternative views of formal entrepreneurship suggested in the literature: the “dual” and “legalistic” view. At the empirical level, the “dual” definition corresponds to the business owners’ rate. As for the “legal” definition, it corresponds to the business registration rate. The evidence presented is based on two panels. The first panel covers the period 2004–2015, and the data set contains 180 observations in 18 countries. The second panel covers the period 2006–2015, and the data set contains 134 observations in 14 countries.

The impact of institutional variables on formal entrepreneurship depends on the definition employed: “dual” or “legal.” Thus, the results suggest that business owners’ rate is more substantial in Latin American countries that have weak property rights. Conversely, from a legal definition, the business registration rate is more significant in Latin American countries that have most secure property rights and fewer labor regulations. These contradictory results suggest that the legal definition of formal entrepreneurship, but not the dual definition, seems to be associated with the type of entrepreneurial activity that promotes economic growth and development.

The results support the importance of conducting analyzes that take into account the different types of entrepreneurial activities that are present in an economy, and in addition the relevance of understanding what each measure is capturing of the heterogeneous phenomenon of entrepreneurship.

The results suggest that the entrepreneurship policy should focus on the quality of entrepreneurship, rather than merely seeking to increase the number of new businesses. Additionally, the results suggest that the legalistic definition of formal entrepreneurship is probably the most relevant for many policy issues.

The paper analyzes together two alternative views of formal entrepreneurship suggested in the literature: the “dual” and “legalistic” views. Also, the paper has used the Latinobarómetro data set, which has not been extensively used by scholars in the field of entrepreneurship and which could be useful for longitudinal research on entrepreneurial activity in Latin American countries.

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the influence of environmental factors on entrepreneurship at the Spanish regional level, using institutional economics as the theoretical framework for the research. Additionally, this work aims to emphasize how environmental conditions have different effects according to the gender of entrepreneurs.

Regional panel data (19 Spanish regions and the 2006‐2009 period) from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), specifically from the Spanish National Expert Survey (NES) for environmental conditions and the GEM Adult Population Survey (APS) for entrepreneurial activity were analysed within a fixed effects model with panel corrected standard errors.

The main findings of the study indicate that both informal (cultural and social norms, perception of opportunities to start‐up and entrepreneur social image) and formal factors (intellectual property rights) influence entrepreneurship, but the informal are more determinant than the formal. Concerning the gender issues, informal and formal institutions are also determinant, but female entrepreneurship is significantly associated with the women's support to start‐up, whereas primary and higher education are associated only with male entrepreneurial activity.

The results of the research should be interpreted carefully, because the availability of data constrained the analysis to a time period that is not reflective of the economic cycle; on the contrary, the data correspond to a period of recession, and thus the results cannot be generalized. Also, the study could extend the analysed period and compare the obtained results with international data, considering the global number of participant countries in the GEM Project.

The study provides a methodology to analyse the environmental factors for new firm creation at a regional level, combining GEM data and institutional economics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the multi-faceted contexts, which influence the motives, decisions and actions that underpin the mundane and lively entrepreneurial practice of migrant youth entrepreneurs (MYEs) within a developing economy context. Moreover, the paper explores the under-researched linkages between migration and informal entrepreneurship.

Inductive, qualitative field data from a migrant destination, the Ashanti Region in Ghana are analysed, comprising 15 interviews with MYEs who hail from 12 communities in the three Northern Regions of Ghana. The authors introduce a narrative-based approach, which has previously been under-employed within empirical studies of informal entrepreneurship.

The findings showcase the complex array of opportunities and challenges, which influence individual decisions to engage in informal entrepreneurship. The findings highlight the importance of not only economic rationales but also non-economic rationales for engaging in informal entrepreneurship. Such rationales emerge from the legitimation of informal practices, the social embeddedness of migrant youth within family and community networks and the precarious nature of informal entrepreneurship.

The fine-grained discussion of the findings contributes explicitly to theory by underscoring the diversity of informal entrepreneurship activities. Theoretically, the article demonstrates the need to look beyond narrow economic explanations for why individuals engage in informal entrepreneurship. Taking a more holistic approach to explaining motivations for engaging in informal entrepreneurship, enables more nuanced understandings of the importance of non-economic rationales for individuals, located in specific contextual settings.

In this study, the authors develop in-depth understanding of how refugee entrepreneurs navigate institutional voids in market participation in Malaysia. The authors employ an inductive research design consistent with recent research investigating adversity and disadvantaged entrepreneurship. The findings of this study reveal that refugees adopted different, gendered approaches to navigate institutional voids in market participation. The women refugees in this study anchored towards safety by leveraging legitimacy of market intermediaries (e.g. social ventures and refugee support organisations) to gain protection for entrepreneurial activities and access markets while conducting their labour at home. The men refugees in this study engaged in harbouring – concealing entrepreneurial activities in the local community or under others’ identities to protect income-generating opportunities. The findings of this study thus provide nuance and demonstrate plurality in how refugee entrepreneurs navigate institutional voids, contributing towards more holistic understanding of refugee entrepreneurship, offering insights for development agencies, policy-makers, and other institutions on how to support refugees’ entrepreneurial activities.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how national institutional environments contribute to differences in life satisfaction between entrepreneurs and employees.

Leveraging person–environment fit and institutional theories and using a sample of more than 70,000 entrepreneurs and employees from 43 countries, the study investigates how the impact of entrepreneurial activity on life satisfaction differs in various environmental contexts. An entrepreneur’s life satisfaction arguably should increase when a high degree of compatibility or fit exists between his or her choice to be an entrepreneur and the informal and formal institutional environment.

The study finds that differences in life satisfaction between entrepreneurs and employees are larger in countries with high power distance, low uncertainty avoidance, extant entrepreneurship policies, low commercial profit taxes and low worker rights.

This study sheds new light on how entrepreneurial activity affects life satisfaction, contingent on the informal and formal institutions in a country that support entrepreneurship by its residents.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of entrepreneurial motivation and entrepreneurial orientation in Tanzania’s informal economy. The development of personal wealth is used to measure the performance of subsistence entrepreneurs in the mama lishe sector.

On the basis of a literature review and a qualitative pre-study involving 27 interviewees, a questionnaire was completed by 152 subsistence entrepreneurs who are known as the mama lishe. Subsequently, a correlation analysis, a factor analysis, and regression analyses were performed to test the hypotheses.

On the basis of a factor analysis, a distinction is made between the development of basic personal wealth and the development of advanced personal wealth. Entrepreneurial motivation and entrepreneurial orientation, as constructed by studies in western countries, have little effect on both forms of personal wealth. Instead, the owner’s age, as an indicator of entrepreneurial experience, is a relatively strong predictor for the development of personal wealth.

By examining the determinants of the performance of subsistence entrepreneurs in an African least developed country (LDC), this study shows that the western definitions of entrepreneurial motivation and entrepreneurial orientation are not directly applicable in this context. By using performance measures such as the development of personal wealth, this study supports the perspective that entrepreneurs in the informal economy of an LDC operate under a different paradigm than their counterparts in the industrialized nations of the west. Accordingly, it is concluded that one size does not fit all.