Martha Alter Chen

Harvard University | Harvard · Center for International Development

This landmark volume brings together leading scholars in the field to investigate recent conceptual shifts, research findings and policy debates on the informal economy as well as future challenges and directions for research and policy. Well over half of the global workforce and the vast majority of the workforce in developing countries work in th...

Technology is a key driver of change, not least in the world of work. Yet little is known about what technologies are used by – or impact on – the working poor in the informal economy, and in what ways. This paper presents findings from a 2015 study by the WIEGO network and local partners in three cities: Ahmedabad, India; Durban, South Africa; and...

This paper explores the impact of local government policies and urban plans on home-based workers. It presents recent national data on the size and composition of home-based work in developing countries as well as findings from two recent field studies of urban home-based workers in several Asian cities/countries. The research findings highlight th...

Informal employment represents more than half of nonagricultural employment in most developing regions, contributes to the overall economy, and provides pathways to reduction of poverty and inequality. Support to the informal economy should include the expansion of occupational health and safety to include informal workers, based on an analysis of...

RésuméLe présent article examine, sous l'angle du concept, de la mesure et de la règlementation, les défis associés à la promotion du travail décent pour les travailleuses domestiques. Après une brève présentation de la réalité du travail domestique qui résume les récentes estimations de son importance et de ses caractéristiques, l'a...

Most policy prescriptions regarding informality have been framed in response to one or other category of informal workers without considering the full range of informal workers. This article seeks to address this challenge with a focus on social protection policy. Section 1 gives an introductory outline. Section 2 presents the official internationa...

Globalization affects people differently, depending on who they are and what they do for a living:it opens up new opportunities for some, but increases the vulnerability of others. This article examines the employment outcomes of globalization with a special focus on processes and factors of social exclusion/inclusion that affect workers - particul...

This paper seeks to focus attention on the challenge of decent work for the working poor in the informal economy. The findings presented here are based on recent analyses of national data in a cross-section of developing countries. The data illustrate the multi-segmented structure of the labour force - both formal and informal - and the average ear...

We experimentally investigate social effects in a principal-agent setting with incomplete contracts. The strategic interaction scheme is based on the well-known Investment Game (Berg et al., 1995). In our setting four agents (i.e., trustees) and one principal (i.e., trustor) are interacting and the access to choices of peers in the group of trustee...

The paper examines the patterns of social exclusion and inclusion in the realm of poor working women. The paper focuses on the nature of employment opportunities, or more specifically: the terms of inclusion, the barriers to inclusion, and the forms of exclusion.

Incl. bibl.

SAIS Review 21.1 (2001) 71-82 Over the past two decades, employment in the informal sector has risen rapidly in all regions in the world. Until the recent Asian economic crisis, it was only the rapidly-growing economies of East and Southeast Asia that experienced substantial growth of modern sector employment. However, in the wake of that crisis, m...

The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.

Globalization presents threats to and opportunities for women working in the informal sector. The paper, which draws on the work of Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) Global Markets Program and of HomeNet, focuses on women home-based workers and analyzes, within the framework of global value-chains, the impact of globa...

This paper illustrates the limitations of offical statistics on the informal sector with the case of homebased women workers: this is, women who work from their homes as own-account producers or subcontract workers. After noting that official statistics in most countries do not classify homebased subcontract work as such, the authors review the ava...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1989. Includes bibliographical references (p. [372]-403). Photocopy.

This paper explores the relationship of the informal economy to the formal economy and to the formal regulatory environment. It begins with a comparison of the earlier concept of the 'informal sector' with the new expanded concept of the 'informal economy' which includes microentrepreneurs, own account operators, informal wage workers, and industri...

Abstract This paper explores the relationship of the informal economy,to the formal economy,and to the formal regulatory environment. It begins with a comparison ,of the ,earlier concept ,of the ‘informal sector’ with the new ,expanded ,concept of the ‘informal economy’ ,which includes microentrepreneurs, own account operators, informal wage worker...