Table of Contents

1: Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis, Ravi Kanbur, and Elinor Ostrom: Beyond Formality and Informality
Concepts and Measurement
2: Keith Hart: Bureaucratic Form and the Informal Economy
3: Robert K. Christensen: The Global Path: Soft Law and Non-sovereigns Formalizing the Potency of the Informal Sector
4: Alice Sindzingre: The Relevance of the Concepts of Formality and Informality: A Theoretical Appraisal
5: Martha Alter Chen: Rethinking the Informal Economy: Linkages with the Formal Economy and the Formal Regulatory Environment
6: M. R. Narayana: Formal and Informal Enterprises: Concept, Definition, and Measurement Issues in India
Empirical Studies of Policies and Interlinking
7: Norman V. Loayza, Ana María Oviedo, and Luis Servén: The Impact of Regulation on Growth and Informality: Cross-Country Evidence
8: Robert Lensink, Mark McGillivray, and Pham Thi Thu Trà: Financial Liberalization in Vietnam: Impact on Loans from Informal, Formal, and Semi-formal Providers
9: Fredrik Söderbaum: Blocking Human Potential: How Formal Policies Block the Informal Economy in the Maputo Corridor
10: Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Rajeev Ahuja: Microinsurance for the Informal Economy Workers in India
11: Krister Andersson and Diego Pacheco: Turning to Forestry for a Way Out of Poverty: Is Formalizing Property Rights Enough?
12: Jeffrey B. Nugent and Shailender Swaminathan: Voluntary Contributions to Informal Activities Producing Public Goods: Can These be Induced by Government and other Formal Sector Agents? Some Evidence from Indonesian Posyandus
13: Amos Sawyer: Social Capital, Survival Strategies, and their Potential for Post-Conflict Governance in Liberia
14: Sally Roever: Enforcement and Compliance in Lima's Street Markets: The Origins and Consequences of Policy Incoherence Toward Informal Traders
15: Liz Alden Wily: Formalizing the Informal: Is There a Way to Safely Unlock Human Potential Through Land Entitlement? A Review of Changing Land Administration in Africa

About the Author

Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis is a Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER. He is a PhD from the University of Rochester and worked for IGIDR (Mumbai), ICRIER (New Delhi) and The Exim Bank of India. His research interests include international economics, development economics and financial economics. Ravi Kanbur is T.H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and Professor of Economics at Cornell University, and previously
Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, and Chief Economist for Africa at the World Bank. Elinor Ostrom was Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. She was
also Co-Director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis and Co-Director, Center for the Study of Institutions, Population and Environmental Change (CIPEC) at Indiana University. She was a member of the Expert Group on Development Issues of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Reviews

`Review from previous edition No matter how you divide up the developing world-'formal-informal', 'legal-extralegal' (my preference)- one thing is not debatable: most people are poor, on the outside of the system looking in, and getting angrier every day. The message of this book is it's time to stop talking and start designing reforms based on the informal practices and organizations that poor entrepreneurs already use. I second that motion. If you rebuild
the system from the bottom-up, they will come, with their enterprise, creativity, and piles of potential capital.'
Hernando de Soto, President, Institute for Liberty and Democracy, Peru
`The obvious is not necessarily the best. For many, a well-defined set of formal institutions is the obvious road to economic success. Academic analysts are attracted by the parsimony of formal institutions. Policy makers appreciate the apparent predictability of the effect on addressees. Constitutional lawyers prefer formal institutions since they lend themselves to ex post control. Yet as the book convincingly demonstrates, in many contexts, and in
developing countries in particular, going for the obvious is bad policy. Imposing a small set of formal institutions forces all economic activity into a Procrustes' bed. Often, a clever mixture of formal and
informal elements has two main advantages: harnessing new resources for corporate governance, and making the firm more responsive to its environment, be it demand, competition or regulatory expectations.'
Christoph Engel, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn
`Linking the Formal and Informal Economy is an excellent synthesis of past debates and contemporary policy analysis. It embraces economic development, governance and social justice issues and it provides innovative case studies from a wide variety of contexts.'
Ray Bromley, State University of New York at Albany