<p>Financial services to the poor are seen as a principal way to achieve goals of poverty reduction and job creation. This study explores the dynamic of microcredit clients with informal sector characteristics.</p><p>These characteristics include number of employees, registration status, having a permanent address, being based at home, being based in an open space, operating from a temporary place, and government support of businesses. In recent years, the informal sector on the West Bank has grown to become a major source of job creation for poor Palestinians. Using data collected by the author, this study finds that a majority of the responding microcredit clients are in the informal sector and some of them use microcredit to create a job for themselves because they had no alternative. There is some interest directed towards formal registration from lenders and borrowers, while general progress, in terms of formalization, is found to be fairly insignificant. Finally, we do not find that microcredit increases the probability of less informal sector characteristics acknowledged by microcredit clients. Therefore, while other factors may explain lack of formalization, microcredit is found not to provide enough stimulus on its own to lead questionnaire respondents away from the informal sector.</p>

Financial services to the poor are seen as a principal way to achieve goals of poverty reduction and job creation. This study explores the dynamic of microcredit clients with informal sector characteristics. These characteristics include number of employees, registration status, having a permanent address, being based at home, being based in an open space, operating from a temporary place, and government support of businesses. In recent years, the informal sector on the West Bank has grown to become a major source of job creation for poor Palestinians. Using data collected by the author, this study finds that a majority of the responding microcredit clients are in the informal sector and some of them use microcredit to create a job for themselves because they had no alternative. There is some interest directed towards formal registration from lenders and borrowers, while general progress, in terms of formalization, is found to be fairly insignificant. Finally, we do not find that microcredit increases the probability of less informal sector characteristics acknowledged by microcredit clients. Therefore, while other factors may explain lack of formalization, microcredit is found not to provide enough stimulus on its own to lead questionnaire respondents away from the informal sector.

Abstract The thesis mainly deals with the analysis of the structure and organization of the informal plastic andmetal recovery system in Accra. To give a clear picture of the context within which the informal wasterecovery system exists, the study has examined the existing formal solid waste management system inAccra. To this end, the study employed a case study method using both qualitative and quantitativeapproaches to solicit the necessary data during the two months of field work in Accra. Furthermore, thethesis employs concepts and theories such as network theory, actors-oriented approach and wastemanagement theories to look in to the structure and organization of the informal plastic and metalrecovery system from a new perspective.As a result, this thesis has revealed that the informal recovery system is built out of social ties and a widerange of reciprocity networks. These networks are of small in size with small number of membership;however, interconnected to one another. In most cases, the network members have common features suchas gender, religious affiliation, place of origin and reasons to join the informal plastic and metal recoverysystem. These networks also have an organizational structure that shows the institutionalization of rolesand responsibilities. This has further provided the structure and condition for the development andstrengthening of common values and norms. These norms and values are more or less providing a senseof control and governance for the networks and their activities. In addition, these networks also provide asocial security system for its members in case of emergencies.The study has also revealed that the identified actors within the recovery system are organized in the formof trade hierarchy where the income and profit of the actors depends on their position within the tradehierarchy. In addition, the ability to add value and also being at the end of the trade chain has a positiveimpact on the amount of income or the profit margins of the actors. In addition, actors placed at theupper- most end are sources capital and finance to the recovery system.Despite the fact that the informal plastic and metal recovery system functions in parallel and interactswith members of the formal waste management sector, the system is ignored by the government. Theinformal recovery system is not considered as a major stakeholder for solid waste management sector.Moreover, the formal sector is also creating a challenge for the existence of the informal sector. There is aneed to integrate the informal recovery system in to the formal system as the activities of recoveringplastics and metals are significant for the environment in particular and for sustainable development ingeneral. / IWWA - Integrated Waste Management in West Africa

Thesis (MTech (Entrepreneurship))--Peninsula Technikon, 2002. / Word processed copy. Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-55). Also available online.

This thesis proposes an original framework for the analysis of third world informal finance. It will be supported by a comprehensive survey of the associated literature. Specifically, most mainstream interpretations of informal finance adhere to a dualist paradigm that revolves around three key assumptions. First that informal firms are less efficient than formal firms in conducting financial transactions, second that their activities are protected from formal competition due to segmented financial markets, and finally that the economic impact of informal finance is inferior to an overall formal system. Yet much of the qualitative evidence of informal finance contradict these assumptions and limit the validity of dualist interpretations. The dualist conclusion that informal finance is a transitory phenomenon can therefore be derailed, leaving room for a more open ended interpretation of contemporary financial informality.

The pattern of a classical hyperinflation is an acute acceleration of inflation to levels above 1000% generally associated with printing money to finance large fiscal deficits due to wars, revolutions, and the end of empires or the establishment of new states (Coorey et al, 2007: 3). After World War I, a handful of European economies succumbed to hyperinflation. Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Russia all racked up enormous price increases, with Germany recording an astronomical 3.25 million percent in a single month in 1923 (Reinhart and Savastano, 2003: 1). Since the 1950s, hyperinflation has been confined to the developing world and the transition economies. Zimbabwe currently has the highest rate of inflation in the world with an annual rate of 7982.1% in September 2007 (RBZ Website, 1/11/07). This paper examines the impact of hyperinflation on Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Harare, Zimbabwe with aims of revealing how SMEs were affected by hyperinflation and other factors linked to the phenomenon. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.

Very little research evidence exists with respect to the informal sector in African countries. Although (mixed) theoretical evidence does exist that postulates a relationship between formal sector employment and informal sector employment, very little is understood about the exact nature of such a relationship. The research problem to be answered by this study thus constitutes two parts: Firstly, to estimate the relationship between informal sector employment and formal sector employment in selected African countries, and, secondly, to compare and contrast the estimated coefficients for the sample of countries with respect to statistical significance, sign and magnitude of such estimated coefficients. The study makes use of a fixed effects or least squares dummy variable (LSDV) panel data regression model, in double-log form, that comprises observations for informal sector employment, formal sector employment and exports (as a possible proxy for the "trade cycle‟ effect on informal sector employment). The sample of countries includes: South Africa; Kenya; Namibia; Zambia; Botswana and Mauritius, for the study period, 1998 – 2008. Theoretically, the expectation is a negative relationship between informal sector employment and formal sector employment as these are (plausibly) "substitute‟ activities in the labour market. However, there is mixed evidence to support/negate this hypothesis. Further, the expectation is a positive relationship between informal sector employment and exports. Including formal sector employment and exports as explanatory variables in a linear regression framework, poses a possible problem of strong collinearity between the explanatory variables (i.e. multicollinearity) as formal sector employment and exports are, generally, strong positively correlated. This study uses suitable ratio transformation to remedy this problem. The general findings of the study are that South Africa, Namibia and Mauritius had statistically significant levels (or average changes therein) of informal employment as a proportion of population not dependent on changes to formal employment as a proportion of population and exports. In Namibia and Zambia, informal employment as a proportion of population was statistically related to formal employment as a proportion of population, with negative sign, and "elasticity‟ greater than 1. In Namibia and Mauritius, informal employment as a proportion of population was statistically related to exports. Namibia had a positive sign and "elasticity‟ barely in excess of 1. Mauritius, however, had a negative sign and "elasticity‟ greater than 1. / Thesis (M.Com.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

State failure in Zimbabwe has had a profound impact on the labour market. As job opportunities in the formal sector have shrunk due to the contraction of the economy, the informal sector has been showing rapid growth. The restructuring of the labour market has resulted in an informal sector that is much bigger than the formal sector, a drastic reversal of the situation that existed just after the country’s independence in 1980. This growth in the informal sector has had the effect of keeping the reported unemployment figure in Zimbabwe at below 10 per cent. While this figure has been met with disbelief and derision both within and outside Zimbabwe, it is based on the application of the international definition of employment (ILO, 2008). This study analyses the impact of state failure on a segment of the informal sector - the urban informal sector self-employed and analyses how urban selfemployment has grown and developed in a context of state failure. This study also explores how this segment of the informal economy has responded to and been impacted by the economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe. The study found that state failure has had a large impact on the urban informal sector selfemployed in a number of ways. This impact has largely been in the form of (a) opportunities in filling the gap left by the collapse of the formal sector after the imposition of price and foreign exchange controls; (b) increased competition from new, more educated, entrants who were opting out of (or could not get jobs in) the formal sector; (c) increases in the number of people employed by informal enterprises (the majority of whom were non-family members); (d) the crisis/failing state’s increasing inability to enforce zoning and tax regulations. The findings suggest that there have been a lot of new entrants into the informal sector. These new entrants seem to be younger and more educated. These new entrants seem to have made strategic decisions on location, types of products they sell and the way they run their enterprises. The urban informal sector self-employed workers are not a homogeneous group. They exhibit differences in a number of areas for example, their age, the activities they are engaged in, their level of education, and the location they operate from. Zimbabwe’s price and exchange control policies exacted a heavy toll on the private sector with many formal enterprises collapsing as a result of these controls. These controls and the collapse of many formal sector enterprises presented numerous opportunities for economic rents and arbitrage. Although most of the respondents in the sample were generally happy with informal sector work, there were some who had clearly disproportionately benefited from state failure. While the study does indicate that the urban informal sector self-employed entrepreneurs do absorb a number of unemployed people, with the informal sector thus playing a distributional safety-net role not only for the enterprise owners but also for their employees, the number of people employed per enterprise seems to be too low to substantiate the view of the informal sector being a significant employer in the economy (even a failing one). The study concludes that the context of crisis/failed state has clearly created some opportunities for a segment of the population. These findings are largely inconsistent with a view that conceptualises the informal sector as an undifferentiated employer of last resort marked by low wages and difficult working conditions. While the informal sector is playing an ameliorative role as an income-generating safety net for most self-employed workers in Harare, the comparatively well-educated respondents selling high end products in the suburbs seem to have actually benefited from the conditions of state failure. The low salaries coupled with job insecurity in the formal sector have meant that the informal sector is increasingly viewed as a more preferable employment option, particularly for entrepreneurs. The returns from this type of activity have even encouraged a number of formal sector workers to increasingly participate in the informal sector to make ends meet. In a country where a formal sector worker’s salary can barely cover the rent, let alone food and other expenses, the informal sector entrepreneurs in this study perceived themselves to be comparatively wealthy. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Adelaide, Centre for Asian Studies, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 252-266).