Re-defining Informal Employment and Measuring its Determinants: Evidence from Russia

Hartmut Lehmann () and Anzelika Zaiceva

No 7844, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Informal activities impact countries' economic development and overall growth. However, studying informal employment is not easy and it is crucial to provide a valid definition of it. This paper contributes to the recent discussion of the measures of informality by taking advantage of a rich dataset on Russia over the period 2003 - 2011, that is before and after the economic downturn, together with a special supplement on informality that allows to construct different measures of informal employment and to analyze its determinants. We demonstrate that the incidence of informal employment varies across the different definitions. However, the determinants of informal employment are roughly stable across the different measures as long as we exclude firm size as a criterion. We also show that risk-averse individuals, as expected, are less likely to select themselves into informal employment.

Keywords: incidence; definitions; informal employment; determinants; Russia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J40 P23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2013-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-cwa, nep-iue, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-tra
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Journal of International Development, 2015, 27 (4), 464 - 488

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