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This paper evaluates critically the assumption that entrepreneurs

who start-up their business ventures operating wholly or partially

off-the-books are engaged in commercial entrepreneurship. Reporting evidence

from a 2005–2006 survey involving face-to-face interviews with

298 informal entrepreneurs in Ukraine, the finding is that they are not all

commercially-driven. Instead, these informal entrepreneurs range from purely

rational economic actors who pursue for-profit logics through to purely social

entrepreneurs who pursue solely social logics, with the majority somewhere

in the middle of this spectrum combining both for-profit and social rationales.

The result is a call for a more nuanced understanding of the heterogeneous …

Recently, it has become increasingly recognized that the reach of the market

economy is shallower than previously assumed and that other livelihood

practices persist, such as self-provisioning. However, neither the prevalence of

nor the rationales underpinning engagement in these non-market work

practices have been widely evaluated. To start to bridge this gap, this article

evaluates the extent of self-provisioning in post-Soviet Ukraine and the reasons

for engaging in such subsistence production. Until now, participants in selfprovisioning

have been portrayed either as rational economic actors, dupes,

seekers of self-identity, or simply doing so out of necessity or choice. Analyzing

face-to-face interviews …

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