Informal Economy 18 December 2006
The term ‘informal economy’ became current in the 1970s as a label for economic activities that take place outside the framework of bureaucratic public and private sector establishments. It arose in response to the proliferation of self-employment and casual labour in Third World cities; but later the expression came to be used with reference to societies like Britain, where it competed with epithets of deindustrialization – the ‘hidden’, ‘underground’, ‘black’ economy, and so on. (more…)
