Informality and tax evasion. An experimental test among female entrepreneurs in Bogotá

The majority of informal entrepreneurs and workers in Bogota are women, most of whom do not have social security provision or job stability.This research investigates to what extent female entrepreneurs in the city of Bogota, Colombia, prefer to situate their business in the informal labor market. Some theorists as represented by De Soto, argue informality occurs due to a preference-based rational decision to avoid paying taxes, while others consider it to be primarily related to an “escape” from poverty as a unique option. The study used an experiment, featuring a tax evasion game targeting500 women participants, formal and informal entrepreneurs, from the city of Bogota. The null hypothesis of the study was tested using Chi-square (X2) and inferential statistical model at a 5% level of significance. The findings revealed that a significant difference between attitudes towards taxation in formal and informal female entrepreneurs in Bogota does not exist.

India’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Frontal Assault on the “Historically Dispossessed”

During the nationwide lockdown as part of the state response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the predicament of interstate migrant laborers in India, caught in crowded cities without means of livelihood and basic resources needed to sustain life, gained national and international attention. This article explores the context of the current migrant crisis through the historical trajectories and political roots of internal migration in India and its relationship with the urban informal labor market and the structural determinants of precarious employment. We argue that the both the response to the pandemic and the disproportionate impact on migrant laborers are reflections and consequences of an established pattern of neglect and poor accountability of the state toward the employment and living conditions of migrant workers who toil precariously in the informal labor market.

Analysis of Labor Informality in Villavicencio – Colombia (2015-2018)

In this article the socioeconomic profile of the employed population in the informal sector of the municipality of Villavicencio (Colombia) is determined, and for this, the data obtained from the Great Integrated Household Survey GEIH (2015-2018) are used and a probit model is applied. It is concluded that being a woman, having a low level of education, earning low income, being single, working more hours per week, not having a work contract, not having a retiree plan, belonging to the subsidized health regime, increase the probability of being in the informal labor market.

The Informal Labor Market and The Costs of Sovereign Borrowing

The informal labor market or informal sector is responsible for an economically significant fraction of GDP production in emerging economies. Taking the informal sector to be all economic activity intentionally concealed from tax authorities to avoid tax payments, an increase in the sector adversely impacts the government ability to collect tax revenues and may increase the probability of sovereign default. In turn, higher probability of sovereign default makes borrowing in international financial markets more costly. However, the current macro-finance models do not properly account for the role of the informal sector in explaining sovereign default risk. In this paper, I estimate a vector autoregressive model measuring the causal relationships between sovereign spreads, a measure of default risk, and the size of the informal sector. The results indicate that the size of the informal sector is as important as formal output variations in explaining sovereign spreads. Therefore, policies designed by emerging economies to reduce the size of the informal labor market are important to decrease the costs of borrowing in international financial markets and increase the financing options for productive investment.

Exercising agency in a hostile environment: How do refused asylum seekers find work?

Using Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory, this article analyzes the specific ways refused asylum seekers use agency to find employment, despite a legal framework that prevents them working. It is based on a total of 34 semi-structured interviews conducted in Paris. Three points are to be noted. Firstly, there is a hierarchy in the type of jobs available: the most popular jobs can be accessed by borrowing the identity of a third person with regular status, while people who cannot use this means are confined to jobs on the more precarious fringes of the job market. Secondly, our research highlights the existence of an informal labor market that asylum seekers can approach, sometimes even before their asylum application is filed. It is also a space for discussion, advice, and contact with other undocumented job seekers, accessible in specific locations or via the Internet. Thirdly, any long-term prospects are hindered by the precariousness of a person’s migration status: although French legislation officially makes regularization possible, under certain conditions, for people who can justify working without ID, our research reveals a series of obstacles on the ground that make this prospect unlikely. In addition to analyzing the current institutional situation, this research focuses on migrant agency, which is crucial to understanding the hidden aspects of migration.

Pathways Through Poverty

This chapter traces women's labor trajectories, studying interviews with fifty-two women in four Ecuadorian cities about their work histories, which all include stints of paid domestic work, periods of unemployment, and usually other jobs. The women's accounts explode common assumptions. Domestic employment has not been a stepping stone to more desirable jobs, but neither has it been the only job that these women have done. Their employment in private homes has been disrupted, temporary, sporadic, and anything but stable. Rather than mobility, the chapter found circularity: women cycling in and out of the informal labor market over the course of their lives, making employment decisions that are shaped by economic, health, and family crises. Their engagement in unpaid social reproduction affected both their choice to do paid social reproduction in the first place, and the way they managed that reproductive labor over time.