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Informal economies, growing throughout the 1990s, make a central determinant of social transformation in Eastern Europe. In this book, the various patterns of informal economies and the causes of its growth in Romania are explored from quantitative and qualitative research: the difficult social transformation; informal consumption and labour of households, their incomes, developments and strategies; the impact of informalisation in different branches, related to the Romanian economy as a whole; in the end, comparisons with Eastern European countries are included, and methodological procedure is explained.
This title was first published in 2002. In State socialist societies, informal economies were essential for the functioning of the economy as well as for household provision. Since the beginning of social transformation they have been flourishing better than ever before. They are a main outlet on the market for the newly emerging middle classes, stabilize the situation of many workers and pensioners, and in countries on the downward slope they are essential for the survival of large impoverished groups. Presenting recent research on the social importance of informal economies, especially in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Russia, the editors give a short introduction for each country, and a common compilation of basic economic and social data follows in the appendix. Household strategies in the ’shadow’, groups of informal winners and losers, informal employment in town and countryside, outcomes from informal activities, the macro-economic importance of informal economies, and researching methods are all investigated.
A large percentage of workers and firms operate in the informal economy, outside the line of sight of governments in emerging market and developing economies. This may hold back the recovery in these economies from the deep recessions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--unless governments adopt a broad set of policies to address the challenges of widespread informality. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of informality and its implications for a durable economic recovery and for long-term development. It finds that pervasive informality is associated with significantly weaker economic outcomes--including lower government resources to combat recessions, lower per capita incomes, greater poverty, less financial development, and weaker investment and productivity.
"Westernisation" and the prospect of European integration have been formidable catalysts for social and economic change in Eastern European countries since 1989. Full of promises and expectations but lacking economic means and adequate structures, Romanian enterprises have faced particularly difficult problems. Prompted by employees' self-criticism, this book explores the dynamics of work values in the service sector in Bucharest. Based on long term ethnographic fieldwork, the study analyses the factors determining social and cultural change at the local level, from the impact of Western ideologies and symbolic measures to concrete organisational and economic constraints. Monica Heintz emphasizes the impact of the forced pace of change, which caused social disorder and disrupted individual values. She challenges the notion of a universal ethic of work and argues that what governs relationships between employers, employees and clients in the Romanian context is simply an ethic of human relations. Book jacket.
During much of the twentieth century, informal employment and entrepreneurship was commonly depicted as a residue from a previous era. Its continuing presence was seen to be a sign of "backwardness" whilst the formal economy represented "progress". In recent decades, however, numerous studies have revealed not only that informal employment is extensive and persistent but also that it is growing relative to formal employment in many populations. Whilst in the developing world, the informal economy is often found to be the mainstream economy, nevertheless, in the developed world too, informality is currently still estimated to account for notable per cent of GDP. The Informal Economy: Exploring Drivers and Practices intends to engage with these issues, providing a much-need ‘contextualised’ approach to explain the persistence and growth of forms of informal economic practices and entrepreneurial activities in the twenty-first century. Using a diverse range of empirical case studies from Europe, Africa, North Africa and Asia, this book unpacks the different varieties of forms of informal work and entrepreneurship and provides a critical analysis of existing theorisations used to explain such phenomena. This book’s aim is to examine the nature and persistence of informal work and entrepreneurship, across a variety of empirical settings, from within the developed world, the developing world and within transformation economies within post-socialist spaces. Given its worldwide, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach and recent interest in the informal economies by a number of disciplines and organisations, this book will be of vital reading to those operating in the fields of: Economics, political economy and management, Human and economic geography and Economic anthropology and sociology as well as development studies
This book describes and quantifies the major socioeconomic changes that have occurred in four new member states of the EU (Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria) since the early 1990s. The period covered was a particularly turbulent one, not only because of the transition process which was well underway but becase of the stablization packages and other economic, monetary and social policy measures, which have had a strong impact at individual and household levels. While previous comparable studies have been carried out, they cover the period only to the mid 1990s, thus this book contains unique and very valuable statistical and micro data. Within the broad framework of socioeconomic change, a number of topics are explored in greater detail. These include changes in activity, occupational status and educational attainment, household income sources and income inequality, and risk of income poverty. The analysis is based on household budget surveys and complemented with other statistical sources, enabling a coherent analysis of the impact of large changes in social policy at household level. The country chapters are all based on common methodological guidelines enabling comparisons to be drawn. This will be an invaluable book for researchers in comparative social policy, poverty and social stratification and economic sociology, and for specialists on Central and Eastern Europe.
This book critically engages with how formal and informal mechanisms of governance are used across the world. Specifically, it analyzes how the governance mechanisms of formal institutions are questioned, challenged and renegotiated through informal institutions. Whilst there is an emerging body of scholarship focusing on informal practices, this is scattered across a number of disciplines. This edited collection, by contrast, fosters a dialogue on these issues, moving away from monodisciplinary and normative methodologies that view informal institutions and practices simply as temporary economic phenomena. In doing so, the authors provide a wider understanding of how governance is composed of both the formal and the informal, which complement each other but are also constantly in competition. This novel approach will appeal to social scientists, economists, policy-makers, practitioners, and anyone else willing to widen their understanding of how governance works.