Urban Informal Sector Research Articles

English

Jimma town is one of the largest towns in South Western part of the country; it hosts significant amount of people who make their life through informal sectors in general and street vending in particular. This study was aimed at exploring the street vending activities in urban informal sector in Jimma town with particular reference to three streets with too much concentration of street vendors. The general objective of the study was to explore the existing condition of people engaged in street vending in urban informal sector. The specific objectives of the study are analyzing the socio-economic backgrounds of street vendors, the working conditions of the street vendors at their work settings, exploring the threats and risks faced by them and their managing strategies, the reason why they engaged in the activity of street vendors and analyzing the livelihood contribution of the activity to both the operators and the poor urban dwellers in the study area and the dilemma on street vending activity. Related literatures were reviewed and examined thoroughly to validate the study. The study was conducted in Jimma, western Ethiopia; because the researcher is familiar to the area and the research site is easily accessible than other towns and cities to the researcher. Three streets were purposefully selected. In addition to secondary data, in-depth-interview, key informant interview, focus group discussion and the personal observation of the researcher were used to address the specific objectives stated at the beginning of the study. This study has examined various aspects of the objectives stated and analyzed some aspects in relation to the literature and data collected regarding the contribution of street vending to the safety of the disadvantaged people in urban areas. Thus, some of the analysis include that the street vendors have low socio-economic status which resulted from low educational level and lack of adequate skill to get better employment, ethnic shifting of some activities (casual works and petty trades), the domination of youth in vending, participation of women who have more barriers to enter the formal sector. Some of the reasons for engaging in street vending for some people is because they consider it as a better option to low-wage employment and to supplement the income they get from the formal employment (low-wage earners), but the others are engaged in it due to acute poverty. Some of the vendors romanticize street vending as a vital occupation. They praise it for enhancement in their financial, human and social capital. Key words: Street vending, urbanization, informal sector, developing countries.

Managing the women managers: a case study of paper bag makers

Subject area Human resource management. Study level/applicability It is appropriate for graduate students majoring in human resource or business management. Students who are interested in studying Asian economies in the world, as they are the most growing economies in the world and at the same time have a shocking number of people employed in the informal sector. Case overview This case study talks about women workers who face a glass ceiling at the management level and deplorable working conditions at the informal level. This case involves women in the paper bag-making business, a part of the urban informal sector. The paper bag-making business provides employment and income generation for the urban poor. The focus in this study is on women production workers, rather than entrepreneurs or professional managers. Focus of the study will be on the change in the pattern of income distribution within the family-based household, the degree of bargaining power derived from productive work and income and impact of technology on the plight of unskilled women force and how technology and vocational training can lead to utilization of manpower being wasted because of lack of synergy between technology and the informal sector in India. Expected learning outcomes Four key points of selection, training, assessment and leadership all have been addressed in this case study, and the relevance of these points is important from the point of view of management students who have to understand the linkages and the hidden costs these informal sector occupations come with and then to device an appropriate strategy to bring and use these human resources to their full capacity by utilizing the existing resources instead of adding new ones, which in development economics is known as Solow residual. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

Structuring Models and Characteristics of Informal Sector Traders in Indonesia (Case Study in Informal Sector Jakarta City, Indonesia)

Socio-economic aspects that occur in urban communities to create activities that are formal and informal that is the dualistic nature of the urban. Formal activities often associated with activities performed by the people in the middle class and above, while the informal nature of activities carried out by community group lower middle class or the marginalized. Urban dualistic also featured in the historical evolution of the modern sector and the traditional sector is dualistic technology. The problems posed by urban dualistic phenomena are often caused by the immaturity of the planning and supervision of construction in all parts of the city where this dualistic condition often develops itself spontaneously, unplanned and illegal. One of the problems arising in connection with the dualistic model of the labor market in the urban informal sector and the use of the term formal sector, street vendors (PKL) is likely to be the type of work that is important and relatively typical in the informal sector. Indonesia experienced economic downturn or economic crisis in 1998 the economic crisis resulted in good economic burden of community, government and private sector so that the towering including private cause limiting the number of employees with layoffs (layoffs). The economic burden society spiraling out of control resulting in the community looking for their own jobs in the informal sector to select, because the government is not able to overcome it with the community to accommodate retrenched workers in the formal sector. Choices made by the society be one with the informal traders as assessed requires little capital and skills. Unwillingness of society in a state of uncertainty, political stability is shaky, the goods of daily needs such as food prices soar resulting purchasing power declined, unemployment increased while time goes on and needs to be bought, then open their own jobs by becoming a trader informal community considered as an appropriate solution, although not necessarily in sales turnover and relatively small, but it can ease the burden of life. Methods Comparative research is a descriptive study. Choices made by the society be one with the informal traders as assessed requires little capital and skills. Unwillingness of society in a state of uncertainty, political stability is shaky, the goods of daily needs such as food prices soar resulting purchasing power declined,increased unemployment while time goes on and needs to be bought, then open review their own jobs by becoming a trader considered as an informal community solution, although not necessarily in sales turnover and relatively small, but it can ease the burden of life. Methods comparative research is a descriptive study. The results showed the characteristics of informal sector traders largely based on the age-old 15-54 years. The level of education pursued most primary and secondary school graduates. Background informal traders most of Informal Traders Become reason.business activities, ranging from early-afternoon (9:00 to 16:00), afternoon-evening (16.00-00,00) and all day (24 hours). Most informal traders do not have the permission to conduct business. The amount of capital 1 - 5 million dollars. Capital sources used are mostly using their own capital.

Labour (im)mobility and monopsonistic exploitation of workers in the urban informal sector: Lessons from a field study

It is well-recognised in labour economics that employers in monopsonistic competition have market power to set wages below the productivity of workers if workers are immobile, which causes monopsonistic exploitation of workers. Monopsonistic exploitation is propelled by employers’ expectations about the degree of (im)mobility of workers and therefore by ex post mobility of workers. It hence begs a question of what determines the relative (im)mobility of informal workers, which has significant implications for monopsonistic exploitation and working poverty in the urban informal sector. From our field study of urban and peri-urban labour markets in Bangladesh, by modifying the method of stochastic frontier analysis, we explain the behavioural foundation to the relative (im)mobility of informal workers. We thereby unravel the effects of individual and household characteristics, sociological, institutional factors and household ties (including worker’s kinship) on the relative immobility of a worker that can, in turn, explain monopsonistic exploitation and working poverty widely prevalent in the urban informal sector of South Asia.

Rural Property Rights, Migration, and Welfare in Developing Countries

Abstract Two-sector general equilibrium models are built to investigate how the quality of rural property rights influences rural-urban migration and national welfare in developing countries. In the basic model where the urban wage rate is exogenously given, the impacts of strengthened rural property rights on rural-urban migration and national welfare are determined by comparisons of the rent-gaining effect and the productivity-enhancing effect. Specifically, if the rent-gaining effect dominates the productivity-enhancing effect, strengthened rural property rights will increase the number of rural-urban migrants and reduce national welfare. Otherwise, the opposite impacts are exerted if the productivity-enhancing effect dominates the rent-gaining effect. When we extend the basic model by considering the endogenously determined urban minimum wage rate, the urban minimum wage determination mechanism is also of great importance in determining the outcomes of the basic model. When we extend the basic model by introducing an urban informal sector, the value of labor’s marginal product of the urban informal sector also plays a role in determining the impact of strengthened rural property rights on national welfare. In addition, urban unemployment is also taken into account by the basic and extended models.

Realizing the State of Women Domestic Workers in Urban Informal Sector

Excessive workload, underpaid, isolated, continuously disparaged, violently punished are some visualizing features of millions of women and girls that are domestic workers. It reflects the decent work deficit in achieving Millennium Development Goal of promoting gender equality and women empowerment. Our economy is growing enormously and so our society. Economic and social advancements are reducing the rural-urban divide. The growth has made urban area as pool of job opportunities for rural migrants. Moreover, urban informal sector has become target area of employment because it is more flexible and suitable for the people who lack in education and high skills. Informal employment remained largely invisible in official statistics, but one of the most visible changes has been the increase in participation of women in the informal sector.

The Role of the Informal Sector in African Regional Integration: Scope and Limits

The major questions of concern in this article are: Whose responsibility is it to provide services to the international informal sector practitioners in given municipalities? What scope is there for taxing the informal sector players to manage ‘free riding’ effectively? Can regional integration ensure policy coherence, charting a sustainable path for development? In light of these questions, this article aims at exploring and defining the roles of the informal sector in Africa’s regional integration agenda highlighting pitfalls and antics. The article is conceptual and based on literature review of scholarly, some official and media articles on the nexus between informal sector, women entrepreneurship and regional integration. Despite this analytical and practical divergence, critical for policy dialogue is the determination of the character of this loose, albeit important nexus. In Africa, the urban informal sector is marked by conspicuous ubiquity. Yet, this phenomenon is no longer a single country subject; it transcends country boundaries. Evidence includes the pervasive practice of cross-border trading and the provision of essential services and infrastructure to the migrants engaging in the informal sector as a survival coping strategy. Reality on the ground may fast-change than the debates present here. Latent in the present debate is the notion of ‘powerless places and placeless powers’ that affect informal sector, women entrepreneurship and regional integration.

Transitions entre les secteurs formel et informel en période de crise au Vietnam

Cet article contribue à combler le déficit de connaissance sur les microdynamiques du secteur informel en traitant trois questions : (1) l'intensité des transitions réalisées par les unités de production entre les secteurs formels et informels, (2) les facteurs associés au choix de formalisation et (3) ceux associés au processus encore largement méconnu d'informalisation en période de crise. Il combine des données de panel uniques, représentatives du secteur informel urbain vietnamien, et une enquête qualitative. Il est montré que le secteur informel joue simultanément le rôle de tampon et d'incubateur.

Youth, skills development, and work in the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2012: Learning from Asia or for Asia?

The article underlines the historic importance of the treatment of skills development, finally, by the Education for All Global Monitoring Report (GMR) team. Among the many challenges in its analysis are the multiple and overlapping meanings of the word skill, and the consequent difficulties of quantifying and monitoring efforts at skills development. The positioning of skills development within secondary education is a further area of huge diversity and contestation. Beyond this, the claimed relationships between skills and growth require careful teasing out. As important as any, however, are the relations amongst skills, work, and employment (and unemployment) in both the urban and rural informal sectors. The article argues that although GMR 2012 breaks a great deal of new ground in addressing skills development, it ends up being rather a school-based account of skill; very little attention is given to post-school skills development in the further education and training colleges of many societies. Equally, it underplays the impact of the wider macroeconomic environment on skills development. Finally, the article suggests that much can be learned from Asia, as well as for Asia, in this crucial world of skills development.

Productive efficiency of the urban informal manufacturing sector in Assam

The paper analyses the productivity growth pattern in the urban informal manufacturing sector of Assam in India. The productivity of the urban informal manufacturing sector of the state is calculated and compared to the national average by using both partial and total factor productivity measures. Total factor productivity growth is taken as the difference between the growth rate in value added and a weighted sum of capital, and labour growth rates, the weights being the share of labour and capital in value added respectively. The index of efficiency of labour is computed for the state and compared to the national levels and is calculated as the difference between the actual growth rate and the desired growth rate of labour productivity. The study finds that positive total factor productivity growth of this sector both at the state as well as at the national level which is an encouraging signal.

A Socio-Economic Linkage of Urban Informal Sector to Formal and Other Informal Sectors in Hawassa Town: Intensifying Growth from the Street

A comprehensive survey pertaining to vendors and the role vendors’ play in economic links between urban informal and formal sectors in Hawasa town is not studied so far. Hence, the main purpose of this study has been to identify major vendor activities and examine the types and intensification of socio-economic linkages these vendor activities do have with formal and other informal sectors to stimulate growth in the country in general and in study town in particular. To this end, it had an overall objective of proposing viable government policy interventions aimed at enhancing the productivity and socio-economic intensification of vendor operations. In order to achieve this objective a sample of 140 street vendors were selected from parent population and relevant data were gathered mainly through questionnaires and analyzed using cross tabulations and percentages. The survey revealed the transfer of resource in the form of wage from wage earners to street vending, consumption linkage. The study also found that there was nearly no closer linkage between vendor enterprise and formal financial institutions. The latter lent little loans to street enterprise owners.

Analyzing the effect of advanced agriculture development policy

This paper broadens the scope of current theoretical studies, divides rural agriculture into two sectors—advanced and traditional, and takes into consideration the land factor and the urban informal sector. Under the assumption that wages in the advanced agricultural sector are higher than in the traditional agricultural sector, this paper analyzes the effect of policies to promote advanced agricultural development with the comparative static method. The main conclusions of this paper are: wage subsidization of the advanced agricultural sector, in addition to having the same economic impact as interest subsidies on the advanced agricultural sector, could also increase the land employment in the advanced agricultural sector and reduce that in the traditional agricultural sector. Therefore, the effect of wage subsidizing policies is stronger than that of interest subsidies, while land rent subsidies for the advanced agricultural sector have the same economic effect as wage subsidies.

HERITAGE MANAGAMENT AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES AND OPPERTUNITIES

The Built Heritage belongs to a particular country or nation whether it could be an ancient city,building or statute, is unique in location and creation. The value associated with it isincomparable due to this character. The built heritage is the link to past, although their originalpurpose has now gone. The historical bu". form of a city is an inheritance of the legacy ofhistory. It records a wealth of information on the development process as well as the wisdom andcreativity of mankind. The cultural, aesthetic and spiritual values embodied in the built heritageare quite different from many other environmental resources.The built heritage in urban areas is at a risk due to various disastrous problems, both natural andman-made. The so-called development both economic and physical has significant impact onheritage properties and may even be threaten with destruction, It is important to take appropriatemeasures to conserve the built heritage in urban areas and face up to challenges from variousdirections. The crucial issue is to find ways and means to balance the development andconservation efforts. Though there is a consensus on the value of built heritage and rational forconservation, the dilemma is found on the clash between the objectives of development plansand conservation efforts. Urban development efforts in developing countries are faced withseveral challenges compared to the developed countries. Poverty, high rate of unemployment,urban informal sector, poor housing and infrastructure are some of them. Under thesecircumstances the value of built heritage has been weighed only in the shadow of the financialbenefits. It is noted that in some instances the economic interests placed in urban developmentplans carry more value than the value of built heritag. Besides these economic impacts, thecomplete negligence of conservation or absence of heritage management plans integrated withthe urban development plans are the most common phenomena seen in developing countries.The ideal situation which guarantee both the security of cultural properties and economicproperty is the formulation of heritage management plans and urban development plans on thebasis of mutually sustainable manner. This paper analyses the issues faced in conservation andmanagement of urban built heritage in the process of urban development in developingcountries. Similarly the potentials for integration (If built heritage in the urban developmentprocess have been discussed. The necessary examples have been drawn from Sri Lanka toestablish the facts.

Job-search and foreign capital inflow — A three-sector general equilibrium analysis

The purpose of this paper is to extend the Fields' (1989) multi-sector job-search model in a three-sector general equilibrium framework by introducing international trade and capital as input. The three sectors are the rural sector, the urban informal sector and the urban formal sector. The rural sector and the urban informal sector use one type of mobile capital while the urban formal sector uses a sector-specific capital. We find that the effects of an inflow of foreign capital in the urban formal sector on unemployment and social welfare crucially hinge on the relative factor intensities of the rural sector and the urban informal sector. We show that there is a possibility of trade-off between the government's twin objectives of improvement in social welfare and mitigation of the urban unemployment problem. These results are extremely crucial from the view point of policymaking in an unemployment plagued, low-income developing economy.

Interrogating inclusive growth: formal-informal duality, complementarity, conflict

I find through analyses of across-state, across-industry-over-state and pooled data (involving state and time) on the Indian economy that the behaviour of the urban informal/unorganised sector is explained by the modern formal/organised sector besides petty agriculture, but the vast rural informal sector is like 'surplus population', associated only with petty agriculture. I also show there could be interactions between the formal sector and modern agriculture. These empirical relations are analysed and theoretical departures from the literature are identified. I propose using a Structuralist-Kaleckian framework: with accumulation in the formal sector a large part of petty agriculture is modernised or converted to suit the needs of accumulation, and thereby we have a long-run drain of resources from petty agriculture and hence from informal sectors as well. However, even under such a resource drain, the urban informal sector may sustain or expand due to productivity advantages and due to pull from the formal sector, at the cost of its rural counterpart. In the short run when the formal sector and hence the urban informal sector expand or when the government promotes the urban or 'productive' part of informal economy, a basic conflict between urban and rural informal sectors is exposed, given the generic agricultural supply constraint. Thus, the paradigms of 'inclusive growth' and 'development management' are questioned. Copyright , Oxford University Press.

Lurking in the cities: Urbanization and the informal economy

This study investigates the empirical relationship between the level of urbanization and size of the informal economy using cross-country datasets proxying GDP and employment shares of urban informal sector. Our estimation results indicate that there is an inverted-U relationship between informality and the level of urbanization. That is, the share of the informal sector grows in the early phases of urbanization due to several pull and push factors; however, it tends to fall in the latter phases. We also show that factors like level of taxes, trade openness, and institutional quality tend to affect the size of the informal economy.

Social capital as a substitute for formality: Evidence from Bolivia

The paper studies the role of social capital in the urban informal sector in Bolivia. It shows that a formal firm has about 6.4 times the sales of an informal firm with no social capital, but informal firms use their social capital to compensate for the lack of formal productivity benefits. By being formal, firms obtain permanent visibility because they can operate a shop or a visible production location and they can produce in locations with better public infrastructure. Informal firms, in contrast, sell in one place – typically in street markets in front of formal shops – and produce in another — typically in the outskirts. Social capital increases accessibility of informal firms and provides them with security benefits at their production location.

An Urban-Spatial Analysis of the Women in the Informal Sectors of Greater Guwahati City of Assam, India

This article reflects the use of urban space by women in urban informal sectors in the city of Guwahati located in North East India. The population influx from across the borders in the aftermath of the partition has huge implications both on polity and on economy of the northeastern states in general and Assam in particular. Importantly, the urban informal sectors have a sizeable share in terms of its significant contributions towards Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as well as generation of employment opportunities largely. Using a feminist perspective, the research is an attempt to investigate the engagement of women in the informal sector in greater Guwahati. Research findings reveal that the occupations of the women workers are location-specific, that is, the manufacturing sectors (textiles, food preparation, printing and skilled service) are mainly home/shop based production (fixed locations) whereas the service sectors (leisure, caring, elementary construction, elementary sales and cleaning occupation) operate at variable locations (construction sites, street pavements, marketplaces and other various locations). Further analysis shows that the informal sector is highly demand dependent and such demands are in the central business areas of the city, therefore informal sector services (skilled services and elementary services) are found to be located in and around the central areas of Guwahati city. Women operators in the informal sector are attracted to the central business district because of the many advantages that it enjoys relative to other parts of a city. The paper concludes by calling on policy makers and physical planning agencies to evolve more pragmatic strategies for urban development matters in order that urban informal sector activities can be integrated into urban development plans. Finally, further research is called for on how urban planners could redesign the urban space with appropriate consideration of the informal sector operators.

Factors impacting on the urban informal sector: seven country studies including PNG

The theoretical framework used in this paper combines the Ranis-Fei model with the Harris-Todaro model. A comparative country study approach is adopted. The paper demonstrates that in the case of labour surplus countries like India, Brazil, and Philippines, the urban informal sector developed much earlier than in the land surplus countries such as Fiji, Ghana, and Zimbabwe. The major factors, which have impacted on the growth of this sector, have been the growth of the economy, the historic size of the number of agricultural labourers and the rural informal sector and the urban-rural income gap. Policies to provide credit to the rural informal sector have had some dampening impact on the growth of the urban informal sector. Policies to curb the activities in the urban informal sector have had some impact and were more common in some of the land surplus countries during the colonial period. In the long run, without dampening population growth and accelerating economic growth, it is difficult to reduce the size of the urban informal sector. In the short to medium run, it may help to reduce any restrictions on the urban informal sector, so as to absorb the growing labour force. But this may run into opposition from the formal sector and the general public.

A Inserção do migrante rural no mercado de trabalho urbano no Brasil: uma análise empírica da importância dos setores informal e formal

Este artigo analisa a inserção do migrante rural-urbano no mercado de trabalho urbano no Brasil. Primeiro, fornece evidências sobre a importância do capital humano para a inserção do migrante brasileiro entre setores formal e informal. Em segundo lugar, investiga se o setor informal funciona como um estágio de transição para os migrantes à procura de um emprego melhor no setor formal e, em terceiro, examina se a alocação do migrante rural-urbano no mercado de trabalho reflete a sua melhor escolha possível, considerando os retornos esperados para as características individuais. Os resultados indicam que a probabilidade de ingresso do migrante no setor formal é diretamente relacionada com a dotação de capital humano, e que há barreiras à entrada em alguns segmentos. As evidências sugerem que boa parte dos migrantes ocupados como assalariados na economia informal procura, após certo tempo de vida nas cidades, um melhor emprego no setor formal.