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on Informal and Underground Economics |
| By: | Farazi, Subika |
| Abstract: | Many firms in the developing world -- including a majority of micro, small, and medium enterprises -- operate in the informal economy. The informal firms face a variety of constraints, making it harder for them to do business and grow. Lack of access to finance is often cited as the biggest operational constraint these firms face. This paper documents the use of finance and financing patterns of informal firms, highlights differences between use of finance by formal and informal firms, and identifies the most significant characteristics of informal firms that are associated with higher use of financial services. The analysis shows that use of loans and bank accounts for business by informal firms is very low and a vast majority finances their day-to-day operations and investments through sources other than financial institutions (internal funds, moneylenders, family, and friends). A majority of informal firm owners would like their firms to become formal but do not do so as it would require them to pay taxes. Registered firms are 54 percent more likely to have a bank account and 32 percent more likely to have loans. Results also show that firm size, the level of education of the owner, and whether the owner has a job in the formal sector are significantly associated with financial inclusion of informal firms. |
| Keywords: | Access to Finance,Microfinance,Banks&Banking Reform,Debt Markets,Small Scale Enterprise |
| Date: | 2014–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6778&r=iue |
| By: | S. Chandrasekhar (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research) |
| Abstract: | Understanding the extent of financial inclusion of rural labour households is important since in the intercensal period 2001-11, the proportion of agricultural labourers in the workforce increased by 3.5 percentage points. This paper examines progress in financial inclusion using information on indebtedness of rural labour households collected by NSSO as part survey of employment and unemployment conducted in 2004-05 and 2009-10. It is estimated that 22.3 million out of the nearly 66 million rural labour households report being in debt in 2009-10. The share of formal institutions in outstanding debt of rural labour households increased from 29 percent to 37 percent while the share of money lender decreased from 44 percent to 33 percent during this period. There has been a near doubling of loans sourced from cooperative societies and a 77 percent increase in loans sourced from banks. In contrast, outstanding debt on account of borrowing from money lender increased by a meagre 1.7 percent. One does not have a ready explanation for the miniscule growth in outstanding loans from money lenders. What is promising is that the reliance on institutional sources among rural labour households without cultivable land increased from 20.6 percent to 26 percent. The aggregate picture however masks large variations across the states of India and one does not observe any structural change in geographical distribution of flow of credit and share of outstanding advances to the landless. |
| Keywords: | Financial Inclusion, Rural Labour Household, Formal Credit Markets |
| JEL: | G21 O16 O17 |
| Date: | 2014–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2014-003&r=iue |
| By: | Karlygash Kuralbayeva |
| Abstract: | I build an equilibrium search and matching model of an economy with an informal sector and rural-urban migration to analyze the effects of budget-neutral green tax policy (raising pollution taxes, while cutting payroll taxes) on the labor market. The key results of the paper suggest that when general public spending varies endogenously in response to tax reform and higher energy taxes can reduce the income from self-employed work in the informal sector, green tax policy can produce a triple dividend: a cleaner environment, lower unemployment rate and higher after-tax income of the private sector. This is due to the ability of the government, by employing public spending as an additional policy instrument, to reduce the overall tax burden when an increase in energy tax rates does not exceed some threshold level. Thus governments should employ several instruments if they are concerned with labor market implicatoins of green tax policies. |
| Keywords: | informal sector, matching frictions, pollution taxes, double dividend subsidy, learning by doing, directed technical change, multiplicative damages, additive damages |
| JEL: | H20 H23 H30 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:oxcrwp:125&r=iue |