Talk:Informal economy

Wikipedia Ambassador Program assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Rice University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2014 Fall term. Further details are available on the course page.

Above message substituted from on 14:30, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Comments
So I just turned this into a real article. I hope deleting the intro-paragraph was fine. Other deletes: Any comments and/or improvements are, of course, welcome.bastel
 * Cuban economy doesn't have any special relationship to the informal economy.
 * New Scientist article: The link didn't work anymore

Should the work of women in traditional roles in the home (i.e. housewives) be mentioned as part of the informal economy?
 * I hope to have answered that with the part on definition. I hope to write an article about care economy at some point in time. bastel

doingbusiness.org external link
This link:  A project studying the determinants of informality.

Was added by an editor whose only contributions have been to promote the World Bank Group. We have recently uncovered significant edits promoting this organization (see this WikiProject Spam discussion). In the interest of our neutral point of view policy and conflict of interest guideline I've moved it here for other editors to consider. If it seems like an appropriate addition you may want to consider linking to the Wikipedia article on the project - Ease of Doing Business Index - instead. Wikilinking is generally more appropriate than external links. Thanks. -- Siobhan Hansa 18:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Explanations for Changes
I think it is extremely important to add substantial information to the informal sector article. At this moment, the article contains little information regarding the reasons why women constitute the majority of this sector. Additionally, the page doesn’t discuss the general issues of the informal sector at all. Lastly, the entry makes no mention of the increase in size of this sector. Overall, the informal sector page as it stands does a dismal job of providing a comprehensive overview and analysis of the topic and its relationship with developing countries as well as its interconnection with poverty. comment added by Jesslitman (talk • contribs) 21:03, 23 November 2010 (UTC) ===Explanations for Changes=== I think it is extremely important to add substantial information to the informal sector article. At this moment, the article contains little information regarding the reasons why women constitute the majority of this sector. Additionally, the page doesn’t discuss the general issues of the informal sector at all. Lastly, the entry makes no mention of the increase in size of this sector. Overall, the informal sector page as it stands does a dismal job of providing a comprehensive overview and analysis of the topic and its relationship with developing countries as well as its interconnection with poverty. comment added by Jesslitman (talk • contribs) 21:03, 23 November 2010 (UTC) ===Explanations for Changes=== I think it is extremely important to add substantial information to the informal sector article. At this moment, the article contains little information regarding the reasons why women constitute the majority of this sector. Additionally, the page doesn’t discuss the general issues of the informal sector at all. Lastly, the entry makes no mention of the increase in size of this sector. Overall, the informal sector page as it stands does a dismal job of providing a comprehensive overview and analysis of the topic and its relationship with developing countries as well as its interconnection with poverty. comment added by Jesslitman (talk • contribs) 21:03, 23 November 2010 (UTC) but many===Explanations for Changes=== I think it is extremely important to add substantial information to the informal sector article. At this moment, the article contains little information regarding the reasons why women constitute the majority of this sector. Additionally, the page doesn’t discuss the general issues of the informal sector at all. Lastly, the entry makes no mention of the increase in size of this sector. Overall, the informal sector page as it stands does a dismal job of providing a comprehensive overview and analysis of the topic and its relationship with developing countries as well as its interconnection with poverty. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.191.84.3 (talk) 08:03, 28 November 2022 (UTC) comment added by Jesslitman (talk • contribs) 21:03, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Lie ?
This paragraph raises an eyebrow:

The above definition does not include criminal activities, that are irregular by nature. Crime cannot be included because such acts have no regulated counterpart against which they may be compared. (Of course, by their nature, informal economic activities escape regulation but that does not necessarily imply that they are unlawful or criminal). Domestic labor, such as childcare and cooking, is in general not included when performed in the natural course of daily living. These activities are either formal or informal.

The writer thus made a lie ? For an informal activity to not be illegal, it would mean that a country does not require anyone to pay taxes and have a legal personality. As far as I know, no such country exist ? I'm wondering whether the all illegal activities (ie illegal drug trade, sale of illegal weapons, stolen and self-refined fuel (happens on a large scale in Nigeria) isn't illegal ? Another issue that comes to mind is governmental corruption; since in many countries the majority of people lives off illegal activities, government officials/politicians choose to look to other way, out of fear of getting no votes.

91.182.173.66 (talk) 16:36, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment
This entry lacks a clear structure and each section seems separate (e.g. the section of Informal housing).I suggest that the whole entry be reorganized and expanded. Information of various economic activities in the informal sector such as drug peddler, prostitution and small business can be added to the entry. Sections on causes, risks/instability and other social issues related can also be included. Overall, there are a lot of things to do to improve the quality of this entry. Feihuamengxue (talk) 23:45, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Help for revision
As part of a class assignment, I am planning on extensively revising this page to make it clearer, more comprehensive, and improve it’s rating. I will focus on restructuring and relocating several of the sections and expanding them where information or citations are lacking.

My most significant proposal is to add a new section: “Social and Political Implications and Issues,” and condense certain sections into this. This section would essentially be the “Issues from within” section renamed and expanded. I would like to move the “Poverty” and “Gender” to be subsections of this section. The “Gender” section was recently revised and is much more comprehensive but the “Poverty” section could use some expansion to provide information on what scholars are saying about the connection between poverty and the informal economy. I am also considering moving the “Possible improvements” section to be a subsection under the “Social and political implications and issues” section I would like to create. However, it might be better to rename “Possible Improvements” as “Policy Proposals,” and include more information about actual informal sector management policies and methods.

I would also like to work on the “Statistics” section, expanding it to offer more, specific information; I am planning on doing a more developed breakdown of what the informal economy looks like in each major geographic area. This would require more detailed information, particularly about the political structure and the type of work that is prevalent in different areas. After these edits, I think it would actual make more sense to rename the “Statistics” section and call it something like “Regional Breakdown.”

Last, I am considering removing certain parts of the article and would appreciate some advice. For one, the “Informal housing”, and “Informal housing in developing countries” subsection are out of place on this page which is about the economy. I think this information would be more relevant as a subsection on the Housing page. In addition, I would like to clarify the paragraph on crime. As it is, it is unclear so either clarify with citations or eliminate.

I believe these proposed edits would accommodate some of the criticisms this talk page has already brought up. Please let me know if you have any feedback for my plan.Kvanschilfgaarde (talk) 19:53, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

old vandalism
Someone just removed 18-month old vandalism, so there could be other vandalism that went unnoticed. --Espoo (talk) 12:49, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Review of Article PJHC
Overall, I think you did a great job on your expanded contributions to your article. I could not find any major spelling or typo errors in your new text and you did a great job on expanding your “policy suggestion” section. For your final contribution, I think you can post more links on other articles to direct more traffic to your page like you did on the “Housing” page. Pictures would also help to make the article more aesthetically pleasing and can potentially aid in visualizing various concepts. If I had to revise anything, I would look into citing the "Political Power of Agents" paragraph more thoroughly because it only has one citation so far. All in all, great job!

Dwang41 (talk) 23:22, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Review Summary
Overall, I think this article could be improved if the Poverty part of the Social and Political Implications and Issues section. More material could be added to this section to make the article more comprehensive. I also think that the addition of relevant illustrations will improve the quality of this article. It will break up the text and provide visual representations of the information. Aaie21 (talk) 16:36, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Informal housing changes
In response to feedback from other Wikipedians and after reviewing the source, I moved the content that had previously been the Informal Housing section to the Housing article page. The source that links informal housing to the informal sector does so much more loosely than the article perviously made it appear and the section seems to separate on the page as it is. Few sources link informal housing to the informal economy.However, in an effort to keep the content, it is on the Housing page, linked to the Informal Sector page. Let me know if you have any suggestions about how to change it, please let me know! Kvanschilfgaarde (talk) 02:13, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Dr. Mora's comment on this article
Dr. Mora has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Is important include discussion about segmentation labor in this topic. See recents articles about informality in Colombia. See: Mora, J. J., & Muro, J. (2014). Informality and minimum wages by cohort in Colombia. Cuadernos de Economía, 33(63), 469-486."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Mora has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Jhon James Mora & Juan Muro, 2010. "A cohort-based analysis of the influence of minimum wage levels on labour force participation in the informal sector: Quantitative and substitution effects," Alcamentos 1001, Universidad de Alcala, Departamento de Economia..

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 21:31, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

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External links modified
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Proposition of contributions: contact
I work for a research project on the informal economy funded by the European Union (more info on my userpage). We are willing to enrich this page (as well as others if relevant) and may have interesting content to share. To that end, as we are new on Wikipedia, we would like to contact the contributors and editors already active on this page to understand what the priorities are and identify how to better contribute. Feel free to contact me. RNSF-Team (talk) 17:55, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Potential Conflict of Interest
Hello, I am a member of a team studying economic activities in northern Canada's indigenous populations. One of the findings of our research was the need for a term to distinguish between informal economies established to avoid taxation and regulation and those that are a continuation of traditional or historic practices. The head of this project published an article about this need and proposed the term undocumented economy as a means of referring to these non-nefarious economies. I’m not looking to promote my team or its work but I do feel use of this concept can lead to a better understanding of the different types of informal economies so I wanted to add some information on it to this article. I had originally considered creating a separate article for undocumented economies but after reading through the Wikipedia guidelines I am not sure this term is currently notable enough to warrant a separate article. I know Wikipedia’s policy is to be bold with new edits but I thought that considering my conflict of interest, inexperience, and the importance of this page it would be a good idea to ask for advice from more seasoned editors. Would it be appropriate to add information on the undocumented economy to this page? MacWellyn (talk) 16:27, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

New review of youth labor
There has been a fairly recent review of research on 15-24 year old worker that often become involved in the informal economy. Would appreciate some eyes on this as there isn't much related to age in this article currently. Recon rabbit  13:39, 8 March 2024 (UTC)