Title: Evaluating the impacts on firm productivity of informal sector competitors: results of a business survey in South-Eastern Europe

Authors: Colin C. Williams; Slavko Bezeredi

Addresses: Sheffield University Management School, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10-1FL, UK ' Institute of Public Finance, 10000, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to evaluate whether informal sector competitors have a negative impact on the productivity of formal businesses. To analyse the relationship between the productivity of businesses and their perception of the prevalence of informal sector competitors, data is reported from a representative sample of 1,430 businesses in Bulgaria, Croatia and FYR Macedonia. This reveals that businesses who assert that their competitors always or in most cases participate in the informal economy have significantly lower productivity growth rates compared with those who assert that their competitors do not participate in the informal economy. The implications for theory and policy are then discussed.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; informal sector; productivity; firm performance; South-East Europe.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2020.111577

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2020 Vol.41 No.4, pp.524 - 538

Received: 18 Oct 2018
Accepted: 18 Oct 2018
Published online: 02 Dec 2020 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article