Digital Commons Network^™

The Informal Economy And Poverty: Evidence And Policy Review, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

This review explores the relationship between the informal economy and poverty so as to understand whether the informal economy helps those who are poor to escape their poverty and how to address the informal economy in anti-poverty strategies.

In particular, the report:

• reviews the existing evidence on the size of the informal economy, who participates in and benefits from informal work as well as what type of work they do and why;

• evaluates the range of policy options for dealing with the informal economy;

• identifies best practice policy measures from other advanced economies that enable people in …

Evaluating The Persistence Of Subsistence Work In Contemporary Economies: Some Lessons From Moscow, Colin C. Williams, Peter Rodgers

Colin C Williams

Repaying Favours: Unravelling The Nature Of Community Exchnage In An English Locality, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

A recurring assumption in community development has been that when material support is provided on a one-to-one basis to the extended family or social and neighbourhood networks, such favours are repaid by offering help in return rather than money. Reporting a study of the community exchanges of 120 households in an English locality, however, the finding is that well over one-third of these were repaid using money. The outcome is a call for the community development literature to recognise and respond to the existence of this sphere of ‘paid favours’ which demonstrates how monetary transactions can be neither market-like nor …