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In the last decade, Argentina has experienced a considerable decline in informal employment and wage dispersion. This paper extends a search model with exogenous human capital accumulation to include the informal sector. The model is parametrized to match Argentinian data between 1996 and 1998 – before the onset of the declining trend – and it is used to investigate the contribution of labor market measures to the falling informality, unemployment, and wage dispersion. The findings indicate that institutional factors did not contribute to the positive labor market trends observed; on the contrary, results show that higher severance pay and minimum wages increase informality and that the introduction of unemployment assistance contributed to the spread of informal contracts across the work force. Further, I find that compliance with minimum wage regulation strongly affects the final impact of these policies. While non perfect compliance might reduce unemployment, it reinforces the incentives of workers to move to the informal sector.

This study investigates the formal/informal employment earnings gap in Turkey. We focus on the earnings differentials that can be explained by observable characteristics and unobservable time-invariant individual heterogeneity. We first, estimate the standard Mincer earnings equations using ordinary least squares (OLS), controlling for individual, household, and job characteristics. Next we use, panel data and the quantile regression (QR) techniques in order to account for unobserved factors which might affect the earnings and the intrinsic heterogeneity within formal and informal sectors. OLS results confirm the existence of an informal sector penalty almost half of which is explained by observable variables. We find that formal-salaried workers are paid significantly higher than their informal counterparts and of the self-employed confirming the heterogeneity within the informal employment. QR results show that pay differentials are not uniform along the earnings distribution. In contrast to the mainstream literature which views informal self-employment as the upper-tier and wage-employment as the lower-tier, we find that self-employment corresponds to the lower-tier in the Turkish labor market. Finally, fixed effects estimation indicates that unobserved individual characteristics combined with controls for observable characteristics explain the pay differentials between formal and informal employment entirely in the total and the female sample. However, informal sector penalty persists in the male sample.

Job finding and separation are not well studied in economies with high labor informality. In this chapter, we contribute to filling the gap in the literature of labor turnover, proposing a methodology to estimate both indicators in an economy with high informality. To this end, we estimate indicators of job finding and separation rates for Peru's developing economy, in which labor informality stands at 70%. We find that, on average, these indicators in the formal sector are similar to those estimated in developed economies; however, in the informal sector, the calculated indicators are approximately two times higher than those of the formal sector. The two indicators show considerable heterogeneity in the informal sector according to several observable categories; in addition, the separation rate is countercyclical, and the finding rate is procyclical, this cyclicality being greater in the formal sector.

By synthesizing case studies on the informal economy throughout the world, I show that women and men specialize in different tasks, work in separate settings, and have differing access to positions of economic power in the informal economy. Moreover, women are more likely than their male counterparts to seek employment in the informal sector. I also explore why gender segregation is such a marked feature of the informal economy by examining characteristics of the informal sector that encourage such gender segregation including the relationship between the informal and formal economies and the social status of informal work.

By drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted amongst waste-pickers and recycling traders in the waste paper, plastic and scrap metal sectors, and engaging with literature from economic anthropology and history, as well as archival sources, this paper documents changing perceptions of just price, morality and fairness in the Turkish recycling market. The paper suggests that multiple markets imply multiple prices, which are contingent and contested. When dealing with price mechanisms largely outside their control, actors tend to associate a fair price with the going market price, rather than factors such as state regulation. Approaches to morality and assessments of fairness become more ambiguous when prices are mediated by actors’ own practices. These range from gift relations to paternalism, envy and deception.

This chapter explores the role of indigenous knowledge system (IKS) in the development of informal entrepreneurial models in Africa. This was undertaken through a discussion of the production processes and the marketing platforms used in producing and distributing mpesu (a traditional medicine used for sex enhancement and reproductive healthcare) by Traditional Healthcare Practitioners (THPs) in the Vhembe District of South Africa, and Beitbridge areas of Zimbabwe. The argument is that drawing on Vhavenda IKS-based strategies, entrepreneurs involved in the healthcare product have managed to develop context-appropriate and innovative strategies for marketing mpesu. However, while this model may appear unorthodox, it has helped sustain the appetite and demand for the product. It has also, despite its imperfections, provided economic safety-net for local entrepreneurs.

This chapter examines a periodic market at the bottom of the pyramid. This study has made an attempt to improve the understanding of rural periodic markets and associated issues of infrastructure, information, etc. A qualitative case research method was adopted to collect rich and contextual information about a rural periodic market in a capital city of north India. Themes related to the market background, market characteristics, market functions, etc., were identified and discussed. This study also brings out some of the issues and challenges associated with rural periodic markets. This chapter takes the bottom-up approach to understand challenges of periodic markets. Findings of this research are expected to be helpful in framing the policy for informal markets embedded in social systems. Implications for businesses which are interested in having access to rural periodic markets are also brought out.

The complicated environment surrounding high-technology firms, involving a high degree of market uncertainty, a high degree of technological uncertainty, a high degree of competitive volatility, high R&D expenditures and the rapid obsolescence of products, creates a great need for sophisticated marketing (Mohr & Shooshtari, 2003). Yet these firms continue to have underdeveloped competencies in marketing (Mohr & Sarin, 2009).