1: Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis, Ravi Kanbur, and Elinor Ostrom: Beyond
Formality and Informality
Concepts and Measurement
2: Keith Hart: Bureaucratic Form and the Informal Economy
3: Robert K. Christensen: The Global Path: Soft Law and
Non-sovereigns Formalizing the Potency of the Informal Sector
4: Alice Sindzingre: The Relevance of the Concepts of Formality and
Informality: A Theoretical Appraisal
5: Martha Alter Chen: Rethinking the Informal Economy: Linkages
with the Formal Economy and the Formal Regulatory Environment
6: M. R. Narayana: Formal and Informal Enterprises: Concept,
Definition, and Measurement Issues in India
Empirical Studies of Policies and Interlinking
7: Norman V. Loayza, Ana María Oviedo, and Luis Servén: The Impact
of Regulation on Growth and Informality: Cross-Country Evidence
8: Robert Lensink, Mark McGillivray, and Pham Thi Thu Trà:
Financial Liberalization in Vietnam: Impact on Loans from Informal,
Formal, and Semi-formal Providers
9: Fredrik Söderbaum: Blocking Human Potential: How Formal Policies
Block the Informal Economy in the Maputo Corridor
10: Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Rajeev Ahuja: Microinsurance for the
Informal Economy Workers in India
11: Krister Andersson and Diego Pacheco: Turning to Forestry for a
Way Out of Poverty: Is Formalizing Property Rights Enough?
12: Jeffrey B. Nugent and Shailender Swaminathan: Voluntary
Contributions to Informal Activities Producing Public Goods: Can
These be Induced by Government and other Formal Sector Agents? Some
Evidence from Indonesian Posyandus
13: Amos Sawyer: Social Capital, Survival Strategies, and their
Potential for Post-Conflict Governance in Liberia
14: Sally Roever: Enforcement and Compliance in Lima's Street
Markets: The Origins and Consequences of Policy Incoherence Toward
Informal Traders
15: Liz Alden Wily: Formalizing the Informal: Is There a Way to
Safely Unlock Human Potential Through Land Entitlement? A Review of
Changing Land Administration in Africa
Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis is a Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER. He
is a PhD from the University of Rochester and worked for IGIDR
(Mumbai), ICRIER (New Delhi) and The Exim Bank of India. His
research interests include international economics, development
economics and financial economics. Ravi Kanbur is T.H. Lee
Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied
Economics and Management, and Professor of Economics at Cornell
University, and previously
Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, and Chief
Economist for Africa at the World Bank. Elinor Ostrom was Arthur F.
Bentley Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. She
was
also Co-Director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis
and Co-Director, Center for the Study of Institutions, Population
and Environmental Change (CIPEC) at Indiana University. She was a
member of the Expert Group on Development Issues of the Swedish
Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
`Review from previous edition No matter how you divide up the
developing world-'formal-informal', 'legal-extralegal' (my
preference)- one thing is not debatable: most people are poor, on
the outside of the system looking in, and getting angrier every
day. The message of this book is it's time to stop talking and
start designing reforms based on the informal practices and
organizations that poor entrepreneurs already use. I second that
motion. If you rebuild
the system from the bottom-up, they will come, with their
enterprise, creativity, and piles of potential capital.'
Hernando de Soto, President, Institute for Liberty and Democracy,
Peru
`The obvious is not necessarily the best. For many, a well-defined
set of formal institutions is the obvious road to economic success.
Academic analysts are attracted by the parsimony of formal
institutions. Policy makers appreciate the apparent predictability
of the effect on addressees. Constitutional lawyers prefer formal
institutions since they lend themselves to ex post control. Yet as
the book convincingly demonstrates, in many contexts, and in
developing countries in particular, going for the obvious is bad
policy. Imposing a small set of formal institutions forces all
economic activity into a Procrustes' bed. Often, a clever mixture
of formal and
informal elements has two main advantages: harnessing new resources
for corporate governance, and making the firm more responsive to
its environment, be it demand, competition or regulatory
expectations.'
Christoph Engel, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective
Goods, Bonn
`Linking the Formal and Informal Economy is an excellent synthesis
of past debates and contemporary policy analysis. It embraces
economic development, governance and social justice issues and it
provides innovative case studies from a wide variety of
contexts.'
Ray Bromley, State University of New York at Albany
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