This article reviews the economic literature on informality, its causes, and its consequences
for development. It covers a comprehensive body of research that ranges from well-identified …

This paper reviews competing theories about the causes of informality in develo**
countries and uses new data to determine which theory best explains the persistence and …

Purpose In this study, the researchers explored the roles played by digital technologies and
digital innovation (DI) in Pakistan's Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) …

The majority of microenterprises in most develo** countries remain informal despite more
than a decade of reforms aimed at making it easier and cheaper for them to formalize. This …

This study examines the relationships between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
and economic growth in Pakistan from 1990 to 2019. It focuses on SMEs and the other …

We exploit a unique, large-scale formalization program in Brazil to estimate the effects of
reducing the costs of formality on firm formalization. We rely on both firm-level administrative …

We conducted a field experiment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil to test which government actions
work to encourage informal firms to register. We find zero or negative impacts of information …

In many developed countries, automation has stoked fears of job losses by less‐skilled
workers. In Sub‐Saharan Africa, by contrast, the adoption of low‐skill‐biased digital …

Efforts to bring informal firms into the formal sector are often based on a view that this will
bring benefits to the firms themselves, or at least benefit governments through increasing the …

Using firm-level survey responses from 2009 to 2012, we examine whether competitors from
the informal sector affect the credit constraints of registered SMEs in 86 countries worldwide …