A large proportion of economic activity takes place in the informal sector in every country, particularly in LMICs. Informality, and the lack of rights and protection that goes with it, affects the families who live in slums, the people who take off-the-books jobs, and the firms that choose to skirt regulations. It also affects the governments who want to increase the size of the formal sector – and the revenue they can collect from it.

Gabriel Ulyssea of UCL and Mariaflavia Harari of the University of Pennsylvania are two of the editors of new VoxDevLit that examines what we know about the size of the informal sector and how it operates. They talk to Tim Phillips about the grey areas between formal and informal, and the limitations of policies that try to increase the size of the formal economy.

Read the VoxDevLit here: https://voxdev.org/voxdevlit/informality