Usually, studies on the informal economy focus mainly upon those working in the informal economy (supply side). However, many exchanges in the informal economy are initiated by purchasers asking how much a good or service costs if paid cash in hand. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to advance understanding of who make purchases in the informal economy and the reasons of the consumers making these purchases (demand side). Two potential explanations are evaluated. Firstly, consumers are explained as rational economic actors seeking a more convenient deal or profit maximisation (i.e., lower price or better value for money), making purchases from the informal economy due to the lack of availability of the product or service they need on the formal market, or they make such purchases involuntarily, due to the lack of perfect information necessary to make a fully rational economic decision when purchasing. Secondly, the consumers are portrayed as social actors pursuing community help. Using a multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression analysis on a 2019 Eurobarometer interviews in 27 EU member states and the UK reveal how the prevalence of these motives significantly varies across populations and regions. The theoretical and policy implications of the findings are discussed in the concluding section.

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to evaluate contrasting ways of tackling self-employment in the informal sector. Conventionally, the participation of the self-employed in the informal sector has been viewed as a rational economic decision taken when the expected benefits outweigh the costs, and thus enforcement authorities have sought to change the benefit-to-cost ratio by increasing the punishments and chances of being caught. Recently, however, neo-institutional theory has viewed such endeavor as a product of a lack of vertical trust (in government) and horizontal trust (in others) and pursued trust-building strategies to nurture voluntary compliance.Design/methodology/approachTo evaluate these contrasting policy approaches, data are reported from special Eurobarometer survey 92.1 conducted in 2019 across 28 European countries (the 27 member states of the European Union and the United Kingdom) involving over 27,565 interviews.FindingsUsing probit regression analysis, the finding is that the likelihood of participation in informal self-employment is not associated with the level of expected punishments and chances of being caught, but is significantly associated with the level of vertical and horizontal trust, with a greater likelihood of participation in informal self-employment when there is lower vertical and horizontal trust.Practical implicationsThe outcome is a call for state authorities to shift away from the use of repressive policy measures that increase the penalties and chances of being caught and toward trust-building strategies to nurture voluntary compliance. How this can be achieved is explored.Originality/valueEvidence is provided to justify a shift toward seeking trust-building strategies by state authorities to engender voluntary compliance among the self-employed operating in the informal sector in Europe.

This chapter examines the history of French work-family reconciliation policies from the 1970s until the present day. It considers the extent to which the development of these policies does and does not link to second wave feminist ideas about women’s domestic labour that emerged in the 1970s. It argues that while in Scandinavian countries, for example, debates and policies addressing work-family reconciliation debates considered men’s roles in the home as well as women’s employment, in France men’s roles were not addressed. This has meant that while French women today are well integrated into the labour force, and have used a variety of resources available to them to free themselves from domestic and caring responsibilities, men’s role in the family has changed very little in comparison with women’s role in the workforce.

This article investigates the relationship between the sharing of domestic tasks in dual-earner mixed-sex couples and the use ofpaid domestic services. Using results from a small-scale survey of the domestic outsourcing practices of employees of a large service-sector organisation in the UK, we find that in households: full-time working by women and presence of younger children is positively associated with the use of paid domestic services; there is no association between the gender division of traditionally female domestic tasks carried out within the couple and use of paid services; but in contrast, greater male involvement in traditionally male and traditionally gender-neutral tasks is positively associating with using paid domestic services. These findings tentatively suggest that a new arrangement may be emerging in which some couples address a heavy workload and a desire for a less traditional division of domestic labour by men participating more in close-ended domestic tasks and outsourcing the more time-consuming tasks traditionally undertaken by women to paid-service providers.

Purpose To transcend the current debates about whether participation in the informal sector is a result of informal workers “exclusion” or their voluntary “exit” from the formal sector, the purpose of this paper is to propose and evaluate the existence of a dual informal labour market composed of an exit-driven “upper tier” and exclusion-driven “lower-tier” of informal workers. Design/methodology/approach To do this, data from a 2013 Eurobarometer survey involving 27,563 face-to-face interviews across the European Union is reported. Findings The finding is that in the European Union, there is a dual informal labour market with those participating in the informal sector due to their exclusion from the formal sector being half the number of those doing so to voluntarily exit the formal sector. Using a logistic regression analysis, the exclusion-driven “lower tier” is identified as significantly more likely to be populated by the unemployed and those living in East-Central Europe and the exit-driven “upper tier” by those with few financial difficulties and living in Nordic nations. Research limitations/implications The results reveal the need not only to transcend either/or debates about whether participants in the informal sector are universally exclusion-or exit-driven, and to adopt a both/and approach that recognises a dual informal labour market composed of an exit-driven upper tier and exclusion-driven lower tier, but also for wider research on the relative sizes of these two tiers in individual countries and other global regions, along with which groups populate these tiers. Originality/value This is the first evaluation of the internal dualism of the informal sector in the European Union.

This article compares work-family reconciliation policy since 2008 in two contrasting case-study countries, namely France and the UK, and investigates how post-2008 economic circumstances and austerity measures have interacted with other policy drivers to influence the extent and shape of change in this policy area in these countries. The article demonstrates that work-family reconciliation policy in both countries has been resilient in the face of economic and budgetary problems and progress has been made albeit from different starting points and in path-dependent ways to “degender” parental leave and to improve the affordability of and access to childcare particularly for those on lower incomes. However, it also reveals that in both countries, despite partisan consensus on the need to further develop policy, a combination of economic constraints and the opposition to reform of key social and political actors has put a brake on change.

Purpose - France is a model of best practice in the European Union as regards policy to combat undeclared work. The purpose of this paper is to take the country as a case study to evaluate the competing explanations of why people engage in undeclared work which underpin such policy, namely, the dominant rational-economic-actor approach and the more recent social-actor approach.Design/methodology/approach - To evaluate these approaches, the results of 1,027 interviews undertaken in 2013 with a representative sample of the French population are analysed.Findings - The finding is that higher perceived penalties and risks of detection have no significant impact on the likelihood of conducting undeclared work in France. In contrast, the level of tax morale has a significant impact on engagement in the activity: the higher the tax morale, the lower is the likelihood of participation in the undeclared economy. Higher penalties and risks of detection only decrease the likelihood of participation in undeclared work amongst the small minority of the French population with very low tax morale.Practical implications - Current policy in France to counter undeclared work is informed principally by the rational-economic-actor approach based on a highly developed infrastructure for detection and significant penalties alongside incentives to declare small-scale own-account work. The present analysis suggests that this approach needs to be supplemented with measures to improve citizens' commitment to compliance by enhancing tax morale.Originality/value - This case study of a country with a well-developed policy framework to combat undeclared work provides evidence to support the social-actor approach for informing policy change.

This paper adopts a new way of conceptualising and explaining informal employment by representing participation in such work as a violation of the social contract between the state and its citizens, and as arising when the norms, values and beliefs of citizens (social morality) do not align with the codified laws and regulations of a society's formal institutions (state morality). Drawing upon evidence from 1,027 face-to-face interviews conducted in France during 2013, this paper reveals that the more citizens social morality deviates from state morality, the greater is their propensity to participate in informal employment, and that the social contract between the state and its citizens is weakest amongst men, single people as well as the divorced and separated, and those living in rural areas and the south-west and Mediterranean regions of France. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for theorising and tackling informal employment.

The aim of this article is to explain the degree of continuity and change in work-family reconciliation policy under the UK Coalition government (2010 to 2015). The article first traces the development of work-family policy in the UK and its accompanying policy discourses from the 1980s onwards before moving on to assess the degree of continuity and change in this policy area since 2010. The article then reviews the policy drivers underlying this policy continuity and change so identified. It concludes that in general, work-family reconciliation policy has been resistant to the degree of austerity cuts suffered in other areas. This resistance is explained by the material conditions which demand investment in work-family reconciliation (continuing high maternal employment, the demands of the new social risks and the need for social investment in early education) coupled with a political environment which supports the policy (from the business community and the electorate, influencing in particular Conservative party policy). The areas which have seen retrenchment – namely, the direct provision of childcare services by government and benefits for poorer families – are those which do not fit with the new more residual welfare-state model constructed by the Coalition.

The aim of this chapter is to evaluate which groups of the self-employed engage in the shadow economy. Until now, self-employed people participating in the shadow economy have been predominantly viewed as marginalized populations such as those on a lower income and living in deprived regions (the ‘marginalization thesis’). However, an alternative emergent ‘reinforcement thesis’ conversely views these marginalized self-employed as less likely to do so. Until now, no known studies have evaluated these competing perspectives. To do this, we report a 2013 survey conducted across 28 countries involving 1969 face-to-face interviews with the self-employed about their participation in the shadow economy. Using multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression analysis, the finding is that the marginalization thesis applies when analysing characteristics such as the age, marital status, tax morality, occupation and household financial circumstances of the self-employed engaged in the shadow economy. However, when gender and regional variations are analysed, the reinforcement thesis is valid. When characteristics such as the urban–rural divide and educational level are analysed, no evidence is found to support either the marginalization or reinforcement thesis. The outcome is a call for a more nuanced understanding of the marginalization thesis that the self-employed participating in the shadow economy are largely marginalized populations.