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Informal sector

Sociology

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Full-Text Articles in Business

Explaining And Tackling Under-Declared Employment In Fyr Macedonia: The Employers Perspective, Colin C. Williams, Slavko Bezeredi Oct 2018

Explaining And Tackling Under-Declared Employment In Fyr Macedonia: The Employers Perspective, Colin C. Williams, Slavko Bezeredi

Colin C Williams

The aim of this paper is to evaluate how employers who illegally under-report their employees’ salaries to
evade paying the full tax and social contributions owed can be explained and tackled. These employers have
been conventionally explained as rational economic actors doing so when the benefits outweigh the costs,
and thus the solution is to increase the sanctions and/or probability of detection. An alternative social actor
approach, however, explains employers as under-reporting salaries because of their lack of both vertical trust
(i.e., their beliefs are not in symmetry with the laws and regulations) and horizontal trust (i.e., they believe
many …


Tackling Under-Declared Employment In The European Union: Input Paper To Thematic Discussion Of European Platform Tackling Undeclared Work, Colin C. Williams Oct 2018

Tackling Under-Declared Employment In The European Union: Input Paper To Thematic Discussion Of European Platform Tackling Undeclared Work, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

The under-declaration of work ranges from employers using unregistered employees, through the under-declaration of income by the formal self-employed and formal businesses, to the misuse of collaborative platforms and the digital economy to conceal the full amount of incomes and social security due.
The objective of this thematic discussion on under-declared employment in the European Union is: (i) to exchange information on what works and what does not, (ii) to generate knowledge about under-declared employment, and (iii) to explore how the Platform activities can contribute to tackling under-declared employment.
The intention is to focus upon two types of under-declaring work: …


Evaluating Policy Approaches Towards Undeclared Work: Some Lessons From Fyr Of Macedonia, Colin C. Williams Oct 2018

Evaluating Policy Approaches Towards Undeclared Work: Some Lessons From Fyr Of Macedonia, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

To tackle undeclared work, the conventional rational economic actor approach
uses deterrents to ensure that the costs of engaging in undeclared work outweigh
the benefits. Recent years have seen the emergence of a social actor approach
which focuses upon improving tax morale. To analyse the association between
participation in undeclared work and these policy approaches, 2,014 face-toface
interviews, conducted in FYROM in 2015, are reported. Logistic regression
analysis reveals no association between participation in undeclared work and the
perceived level of penalties and risk of detection, but there is an association with
the level of tax morale. The paper concludes …


Evaluating Competing Perspectives Towards Undeclared Work: Some Lessons From Bulgaria, Colin C. Williams Aug 2018

Evaluating Competing Perspectives Towards Undeclared Work: Some Lessons From Bulgaria, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

When explaining and tackling the undeclared economy in Central
and Eastern Europe, participants have been conventionally viewed
as rational economic actors. They engage in undeclared work
when the benefits outweigh the costs. Participation is thus
deterred by increasing the sanctions and/or probability of being
caught. Recently, however, an alternative social actor approach
has emerged which views participants as engaging in undeclared
work when their norms, values and beliefs (i.e. citizen morale) do
not align with laws and regulations (i.e. state morale). Here, therefore,
initiatives to develop greater symmetry between civic and
state morale are pursued. To evaluate the validity and …


Tackling The Urban Informal Economy: Some Lessons From A Study Of Europe’S Urban Population, Colin C. Williams, Ioana Horodnic Jun 2017

Tackling The Urban Informal Economy: Some Lessons From A Study Of Europe’S Urban Population, Colin C. Williams, Ioana Horodnic

Colin C Williams

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the
most effective way of tackling the urban informal
economy. It has been recently argued that the
conventional rational economic actor approach
(which increases the costs of participating in the
urban informal economy so that they outweigh
the benefi ts) should be replaced or complemented
by a social actor approach which focuses
upon improving tax morale. To evaluate the effectiveness
of these supposedly alternative approaches
to tackling the participation of urban
populations in the informal economy, we report
the results of face-to-face interviews conducted
in 2013 with 17,886 urban dwellers across the …


Tackling The Participation Of Europe’S Rural Population In The Shadow Economy, Colin C. Williams, Ioana Horodnic May 2017

Tackling The Participation Of Europe’S Rural Population In The Shadow Economy, Colin C. Williams, Ioana Horodnic

Colin C Williams

To tackle the shadow economy, an emergent literature has called for the conventional
rational economic actor approach (which uses deterrents to ensure that the costs of engaging in shadow
work outweigh the benefits) to be replaced or complemented by a social actor approach which focuses
upon improving tax morale. To evaluate the relevance and validity of doing this in rural areas, we here report
face-to-face interviews conducted with 9,677 rural dwellers conducted across the 28 member states of the
European Union (EU28) in 2013. Multilevel logistic regression analysis reveals that both approaches significantly
reduce the rural shadow economy. When tax …


The Informal Sector As A Path To Expanding Opportunities, Colin C. Williams Oct 2015

The Informal Sector As A Path To Expanding Opportunities, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Is the informal economy a help or a hindrance to expanding the opportunities of the poor? Conventionally, it has been deemed a hindrance; an unproductive sphere that is deleterious to wider economic development and growth. Recently, however, a more positive depiction has emerged viewing it as a useful means of expanding the opportunities of the poor. This report reviews the arguments and evidence for viewing it more positively and how it might be harnessed in order to help expand the opportunities of the poor.