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Several studies have examined the effect of formal economy (usually proxy by economic growth) on environmental quality; however, the symmetric and asymmetric impact of the informal economy on environmental quality has not been examined in Nigeria. Therefore, this study aims to explore the short- and long-run (a)symmetric effect of formal and informal economies and financial development on Nigeria’s environmental quality between 1984 and 2017.

The study uses ecological footprint to measure environmental quality. An increase in ecological footprint suggests a fall in environmental quality. Informal economy is calculated as a percentage of GDP using the currency demand approach. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL), nonlinear ARDL cointegration framework and vector error correction granger causality are used as estimation techniques.

The study’s outcomes establish the existence of asymmetric structure in the link between economic activities and the environment both in the short and long run. The asymmetric results reveal that positive and negative changes in the formal economy increase the ecological footprint in both periods. Hence, activities in the formal economy reduce environmental quality. On the other hand, positive and negative changes in the informal economy only positively influence the ecological footprint in the long run. In contrast, it negatively impacts the ecological footprint in the short run. This suggests that activities in the informal economy worsen the long-run environmental quality. Financial development has a positive influence on the ecological footprint, thus degrading the environmental quality. Furthermore, in the short run, a unidirectional relationship from the formal economy to the ecological footprint, while a bidirectional causality exists between informal and formal economies. Meanwhile, a unidirectional causality from the (in)formal economies and financial development to the ecological footprint was found in the long run.

The outcome of this study shows that both informal and formal economies contribute to ecological footprint; therefore, mainstreaming the informal economy into the formal economy will further increase the problem of environmental degradation and worsen environmental quality.

The study investigates the symmetric and asymmetric effect of formal and informal economies on environmental quality in Nigeria, which is largely missing in the empirical literature.

The purpose of this study is to understand the influence of formal learning from a web-based training and informal (workplace) learning afterwards on the behaviour of general practitioners (GPs) with respect to prescription of antibiotics.

To obtain insight in various learning processes, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 GPs. These interviews were transcribed and analysed with a theory-based template, that had been defined beforehand, but with an open mind for emerging themes.

The web-based training was perceived by GPs to change their prescription behaviour, mostly as a result of informal learning processes. Being a research participant and being a supervisor appeared to create most opportunities for informal learning.

The current research shows that being a research participant and/or a supervisor enhance informal learning activities, for example, reflection and social interaction, and thereby formal training becomes more effective. It is recommended to remind GPs regularly to reflect on their prescribing behaviour and to stimulate them to reflect and seek social interaction besides participating in formal training.

Our study adds to the existing literature by considering informal learning processes in an evaluation of the perceived effects of formal training. Our findings have implications for the design and evaluation of formal trainings with the purpose of behavioural change of doctors.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze data from the first-ever national-level study of informal work in the USA to test two prominent points of focus in the literature: how participation in informal work relates to social embeddedness and formal labor supply. This paper also provides a comparative test of the factors associated with exchange-based informal work (i.e. money/barter) vs self-provisioning activities.

The study draws on data from a national-level household telephone survey and uses descriptive statistics and logistic regression models.

The data show that participation in the informal economy is widespread in the USA. Consistent with theory, it is found that measures of social embeddedness and formal labor supply are much more salient for predicting participation in informal work for money/barter compared to self-provisioning.

Drawing on unique data from the first national-level household survey of informal work in the USA, this study provides generalizable support for the contention that the informal sector stands as a persistent structural feature in modern society. The results build on the wealth of information produced by qualitative case studies examining informal economic activity as well as a smaller number of regionally targeted surveys to provide important theoretical insights.

The paper aims to examine the coexistence of formal and informal resource sectors in resource-dependent economies, whose production depends on an exhaustible (e.g. minerals) and a renewable resource stock (e.g. forest), respectively. It then examines the implications of declining mineral stocks on public revenues, labour movements between sectors, and economic growth in an attempt to elucidate the poor economic performance of many mineral-dependent countries.

The paper presents a theoretical model that describes the coexistence of a formal and informal resource-dependent sector, where individuals can direct their work effort. It then assesses how declining mineral stocks influence labour mobility across sectors and environmental degradation.

Decreasing mineral stocks induce a relocation of labour towards informal production and deprive local authorities from public revenues collected within the formal economy. This constrains the ability to improve infrastructure and welfare over time and simultaneously imposes pressure on the local environment.

The paper provides a novel theoretical mechanism that attempts to elucidate the “resource curse”, i.e. the poor economic performance of many mineral-rich economies. It purposely explores the implications of a coexistence of formal and informal resource activities on economic development for resource-dependent economies, in order to obtain new insights into this direction.

Using small‐scale cross‐border trade and smuggling as an example of an informal practice carried out in many post‐socialist countries, the purpose of this paper is to explore which different meanings this activity possesses for the people being involved in it and in how far small‐scale cross‐border trade is being accepted and looked at by society. The authors hope to show the different connections between informal and formal activities and specificities of localities which people in the mentioned countries deploy when trying to secure their livelihood.

The authors used a qualitative empirical research including group discussions with small‐scale traders and small entrepreneurs, expert interviews with representatives of the border authorities and systematic observations at border crossing points and open‐air markets at the Finnish‐Russian, Polish‐Ukrainian, Polish‐Belarusian and Ukrainina‐Romanian borders.

The paper provides empirical insights about why people carry out smuggling and small‐scale trade and how these informal activities are perceived in the local environment. It suggests that informal economic cross‐border activities are often highly legitimized despite their illegal character. The border creates certain extra opportunities as it enables arbitrage dealings. Rather as a side effect though, the Schengen visa regime has evoked a decreasing profit margin of transborder economic activities. Therefore, it remains unclear whether the Eastern external EU border will serve as an informal economic resource in the future.

Thanks to a multisited qualitative approach to a very sensitive research topic, the paper allows empirical insights into meanings and uses of smuggling and cross‐border small‐scale trade.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of chronological age and formal and informal learning activities on employability. Furthermore, indirect effects of age on employability via learning activities were tested.

The authors conducted quantitative, cross-sectional survey research (n=780) in three Dutch and Austrian organizations to study the relationship between chronological age, formal and informal learning activities, and employability using structural equation modeling.

The authors find that both formal and informal learning increase employees’ employability. However, each type of learning contributes to different components of employability. Additionally, the authors find indirect effects of chronological age on employability via formal learning.

The results question the focus on chronological age in organizational and political decision making and contribute new insights for the management of an increasingly older workforce.

The findings question the predominant use of chronological age as decisive criterion in organizational and national policies and call for closer examination of stereotypes against older employees. Employees should be supported in pursuing learning activities – irrespective of their chronological age. The implications of limiting employees’ access to formal learning activities may limit their future employability. Individual employees, however, are in control of their informal learning activities, and this is a very important lever to maintain and develop employability.

Given the increasing dependency of social welfare systems on older people's active participation in the labor market, this study stresses that it is not chronological age per se that affects people's employability. This diverges from the way of how chronological age is used in policy making.

This study contributes further evidence for the relationships of age and formal and informal learning on employability. Additionally, it extends previous literature by examining different effects on different facets of employability, criticizing the prevalent use of chronological age, and investigating potential mediation effects.

The paper studies the simultaneous effect of formal and informal volunteering on self-perceived individual health across nine European countries while controlling, among other things, for socioeconomic characteristics and social and cultural participation.

This paper employs the 2006 wave of the EU-SILC dataset for estimating recursive trivariate probit models using instrumental variables.

The paper finds that although formal volunteering and informal volunteering are correlated with each other, they have different impacts on health. Formal volunteering is never correlated with higher self-perceived individual health except in the Netherlands. In contrast, informal volunteering is related to lower self-perceived individual health in Austria, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy.

The first limitation concerns the absence of other measures of volunteering, such as volunteering hours that are not available in the employed dataset. The second limitation is that the dataset collection on social and cultural variables in EU-SILC is cross-sectional while the optimal dataset should be a panel data. The third limitation is that instrumental variables are observed in the same year of declaring self-perceived individual health while the optimal timing would be at least one year before.

Findings of the paper show that formal volunteering has no effect on self-perceived individual health while informal volunteering has negative consequences.

Volunteering is performed because of an individual decision and could be considered a consequence of how social responsibilities are distributed within countries. Our results show that informal volunteering has a negative effect on health; this is likely to depend on how people manage stress coming from performing this altruistic activity. It is likely that a more cautious distribution of social responsibilities could prevent the negative effects of informal volunteering on health.

The originality of the present paper is in simultaneously examining the impact of formal and informal volunteering on self-perceived individual health. Furthermore, most of the existing studies on formal volunteering and health focus on a single country; this paper compares nine European countries characterized by different social, cultural, economic, and institutional features. Finally, the paper addresses the issue of reverse causation.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2017-0548

Recent work in the economics of innovation in developing countries increasingly considers the formality of business as a determining factor of economic development. However, current knowledge on how formality determines both innovation and business performance remains mixed. This article examines this relationship by analyzing, on the one hand, the role of formality on innovation and, on the other hand, the moderating effect of formality on the relationship between innovation and the performance of business in francophone Sub-Saharan Africa.

Based on a sample of 1,369 Cameroonian and Senegalese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the International Development Research Center (IDRC), the Crepon Duguet et Maraise (CDM) technique was used to reduce the endogeneity bias inherent in this type of analysis.

The results show that formal companies have a better capacity for innovation. In addition, formality positively moderates the relationship between innovation and the performance of businesses in the case of product and commercial innovations. On the other hand, it negatively moderates the relationship between innovation and the performance for process and organizational innovations.

These results show that the advantages of formalization widely relayed by national public institutions and international organizations can present a risk for business if the expected gains are not accompanied by innovations.

This paper contributes to research by taking into account the heterogeneity of firms because it is one of the first to study formality as a moderator in the relationship between innovation and firm performance in Sub-Saharan African economies.

The purpose of this paper is to review options for measuring innovation in the informal sector and proposes an agenda for future work.

It starts with a review of surveys of innovation in the formal business sector, and related definitions, as sources of questions and definitions which could be applied to the informal sector. Then, labor force surveys, and those that are combined with establishment surveys to measure informal sector activities, are examined with a view to adding questions, or modules, on the measurement of innovation in the informal sector. In addition, the advantages of using semi-structured interviews and ad hoc questionnaires in specific sub-sectors of the informal sector are explored.

The discussion leads to a possible agenda for future work on the development of policy relevant indicators of innovation in the informal economy. Two viable scenarios emerge: first, adding innovation questions to existing large-scale surveys of the informal economy; and/or second, conducting ad hoc questionnaire- and interview-based sectoral studies in selected countries.

The proposed course of actions suffers from a few shortcomings: first, amending existing surveys as proposed here is always a challenging undertaking. A new survey questions have to be tested (cognitive and other testing); their deployment also depends on the willingness of countries to include new questions. Second, surveying the informal economy and applying proper sampling will remain an issue, no matter how good the survey design, and not matter how sincere the effort. Third, and finally, conducting these new survey techniques will require substantial resources over time.

In the coming years, new efforts are planned to gather data and better measure innovation in developing countries, such as the third edition of the African Innovation Outlook. This will widen the scope of reporting and analysis to include coverage of innovations in the informal sector (AU-NEPAD 2014). The suggestions in this chapter are intended to lay important groundwork for future empirical work, to help develop appropriate indicators and support new approaches to innovation policy in developing countries. Pragmatic suggestions are formulated, pointing to potential opportunities and challenges.

The informal economy is a hugely important contributor to economic growth and social well-being in Africa and other developing countries. Better measurement and contributing to a better understanding of innovation in the informal economy will be important progress.

The contribution of the paper lies in the novel combination of tested approaches in informal sector surveys, on the one hand, and innovation surveys in the formal sector, on the other hand. The approaches provide ways forward to gain better understanding of the innovation in the informal economy, and to support innovation policy in African countries and beyond.

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.