Bennett, J., Gould, M. and Rablen, M.D. orcid.org/0000-0002-3521-096X (2012) Risk attitudes and informal employment in a developing economy. IZA Journal of Development and Migration, 1. 5. ISSN 2193-9020
Abstract
We model an urban labour market in a developing economy, incorporating workers’ risk attitudes. Trade-offs between risk aversion and ability determine worker allocation across formal and informal wage employment, and voluntary and involuntary self employment. Greater risk of informal wage non-payment can raise or lower informal wage employment, depending on the source of risk. Informal wage employment can be reduced by increasing detection efforts or by strengthening contract enforcement for informal wage payment. As the average ability of workers rises, informal wage employment first rises, then falls. Greater demand for formal production may lead to more involuntary self employment.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Bennett et al.; licensee Springer. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Risk attitudes; Informality; Self employment |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Economics (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 27 Apr 2017 12:58 |
Last Modified: | 23 Jun 2017 15:32 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-9020-1-5 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/2193-9020-1-5 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:115512 |