IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/annpce/v91y2020i1p151-164.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Seeking Rent In The Informal Sector

Author

Listed:
  • Saibal KAR
  • Biswajit MANDAL
  • Sugata MARJIT
  • Vivekananda MUKHERJEE

Abstract

Rent seeking within the vast informal segment of the developing world is a relatively under‐explored topic in the interface of labor market policies and public economics. Moreover, how rent seeking and corruption within the informal segment gets affected by economic reforms targeted for the formal sector is rarely discussed in the literature. This paper fills the gap. We identify conditions under which economic reform in the formal segment will increase the rate of corruption or rent seeking in the informal sector and raise the pay‐off for those involved in rent‐seeking activities. When the formal sector contracts due to reforms, rent seeking in the informal sector may increase and lower the level of welfare unconditionally. Economic reforms may increase corruption instead of reducing it, unlike standard conjectures.

Suggested Citation

  • Saibal KAR & Biswajit MANDAL & Sugata MARJIT & Vivekananda MUKHERJEE, 2020. "Seeking Rent In The Informal Sector," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 91(1), pages 151-164, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:annpce:v:91:y:2020:i:1:p:151-164
    DOI: 10.1111/apce.12253
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/apce.12253
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/apce.12253?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baksi, Soham & Bose, Pinaki & Pandey, Manish, 2009. "The impact of liberalization on bureaucratic corruption," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 214-224, October.
    2. Daniel Kaufmann & Shang-Jin Wei, 1999. "Does "Grease Money" Speed Up the Wheels of Commerce?," NBER Working Papers 7093, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Simeon Djankov & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2002. "The Regulation of Entry," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 1-37.
    4. Arye L. Hillman & Ngo Van Long, 2017. "Rent Seeking: The Social Cost of Contestable Benefits," CESifo Working Paper Series 6462, CESifo.
    5. Sugata Marjit & Biswajit Mandal, 2012. "Domestic trading costs and pure theory of international trade," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 8(2), pages 165-178, June.
    6. Biswajit Mandal & Sugata Marjit & Hamid Beladi, 2018. "Reform, informal sector, and extortion," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 106-123, March.
    7. Marjit, Sugata & Ghosh, Sudeep & Biswas, Amit, 2007. "Informality, corruption and trade reform," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 777-789, September.
    8. Ronald W. Jones, 2018. "The Structure of Simple General Equilibrium Models," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: International Trade Theory and Competitive Models Features, Values, and Criticisms, chapter 4, pages 61-84, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Marjit, Sugata, 2003. "Economic reform and informal wage--a general equilibrium analysis," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 371-378, October.
    10. Avinash Dixit, 2003. "Some Lessons from Transaction‐Cost Politics for Less‐Developed Countries," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(2), pages 107-133, July.
    11. Marcouiller, Douglas & Young, Leslie, 1995. "The Black Hole of Graft: The Predatory State and the Informal Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 630-646, June.
    12. Rauch, James E., 1991. "Modelling the informal sector formally," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 33-47, January.
    13. Biswas, Amit K. & Thum, Marcel, 2017. "Corruption, environmental regulation and market entry," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 66-83, February.
    14. Baksi, Soham & Bose, Pinaki, 2016. "Informal sector, regulatory compliance, and leakage," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 166-176.
    15. Arye Hillman & Ngo Van Long, 2017. "The social cost of contestable benefits," CIRANO Working Papers 2017s-11, CIRANO.
    16. Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman (ed.), 2015. "Companion to the Political Economy of Rent Seeking," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15325.
    17. Mandal, Biswajit & Marjit, Sugata, 2013. "Trade reform, intermediation and corruption," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 741-746.
    18. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson & Thierry Verdier, 2017. "Asymmetric Growth and Institutions in an Interdependent World," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(5), pages 1245-1305.
    19. Mr. Vito Tanzi & Mr. Hamid R Davoodi, 1997. "Corruption, Public Investment, and Growth," IMF Working Papers 1997/139, International Monetary Fund.
    20. Friedman, Eric & Johnson, Simon & Kaufmann, Daniel & Zoido-Lobaton, Pablo, 2000. "Dodging the grabbing hand: the determinants of unofficial activity in 69 countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 459-493, June.
    21. Dutta, Nabamita & Kar, Saibal & Roy, Sanjukta, 2013. "Corruption and persistent informality: An empirical investigation for India," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 357-373.
    22. Carruth, Alan A. & Oswald, Andrew J., 1981. "The determination of union and non-union wage rates," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 285-302.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Saha, Shrabani & Beladi, Hamid & Kar, Saibal, 2021. "Corruption control, shadow economy and income inequality: Evidence from Asia," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 45(2).
    2. Klaus Prettner & Davud Rostam‐Afschar, 2020. "Can taxes raise output and reduce inequality? The case of lobbying," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 67(5), pages 455-461, November.
    3. Vivekananda Mukherjee and Aparajita Roy, 2019. "Incidence of Corruption On Formal And Informal Sectors: Is There Any Symmetry?," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 44(3), pages 79-99, September.
    4. Shrimoyee Ganguly & Rajat Acharyya, 2021. "Trade liberalization, export quality, and three dimensions of wage inequality," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 2157-2179, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Biswajit Mandal & Sugata Marjit & Hamid Beladi, 2018. "Reform, informal sector, and extortion," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 106-123, March.
    2. Chaudhuri, Sarbajit & Mandal, Biswajit, 2012. "Bureaucratic reform, informal sector and welfare," MPRA Paper 36072, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Marjit, Sugata & Mandal, Biswajit, 2010. "Extortion and Informal Sector in a Small Open Economy," MPRA Paper 25044, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Sugata Marjit & Saibal Kar, 2012. "Firm Heterogeneity, Informal Wage and Good Governance," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(4), pages 527-539, November.
    5. Kar, Saibal & Saha, Shrabani, 2012. "Corruption, Shadow Economy and Income Inequality: Evidence from Asia," IZA Discussion Papers 7106, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Dabla-Norris, Era & Gradstein, Mark & Inchauste, Gabriela, 2008. "What causes firms to hide output? The determinants of informality," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(1-2), pages 1-27, February.
    7. Shrimoyee Ganguly & Rajat Acharyya, 2021. "Trade liberalization, export quality, and three dimensions of wage inequality," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 2157-2179, November.
    8. Biswajit Mandal & Prasun Bhattacharjee, 2020. "A Theoretical Note on Sector-specific FDI Inflow in Developing Economies and the Real Exchange Rate," Foreign Trade Review, , vol. 55(2), pages 189-198, May.
    9. Chaudhuri, Sarbajit & Mukhopadhyay, Ujjaini, 2009. "Revisiting the Informal Sector: A General Equilibrium Approach," MPRA Paper 52135, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Mandal, Biswajit & Ghosh, Sujata, 2019. "Reformatory Policies and Factor Prices in a Developing Economy with Informal Sector," GLO Discussion Paper Series 367, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    11. Sugata Marjit & Dibyendu S. Maiti, 2005. "Globalization, Reform and the Informal Sector," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2005-12, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. Maiti, Dibyendu & Bhattacharyya, Chandril, 2020. "Informality, enforcement and growth," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 259-274.
    13. Dutta, Nabamita & Kar, Saibal & Roy, Sanjukta, 2013. "Corruption and persistent informality: An empirical investigation for India," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 357-373.
    14. Straub, Stéphane, 2005. "Informal sector: The credit market channel," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 299-321, December.
    15. Mandal, Biswajit & Roy, Sangita, 2016. "Trade liberalization and wage distribution when skilled intermediate input is used in import competing sector that uses a commom type of capital," MPRA Paper 87460, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Mandal, Biswajit & Biswas, Anindya, 2015. "Sector Specific Inflow of capital, Non-Traded sector and an Increase in Real Exchange Rate," MPRA Paper 68226, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Mandal, Biswajit, 2014. "Traded Goods, Tax and Intermediation - the Role of Corrupt Nontraded Sector," MPRA Paper 56525, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Marjit, Sugata & Kar, Saibal, 2012. "Informal sector and the developing world: relating theory and evidence to India," MPRA Paper 103445, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Graf Lambsdorff, Johann, 2005. "Consequences and causes of corruption: What do we know from a cross-section of countries?," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Volkswirtschaftliche Reihe V-34-05, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    20. Sugata Marjit & Biswajit Mandal, 2016. "International Trade, Migration and Unemployment – The Role of Informal Sector," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 8-22, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • E26 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Informal Economy; Underground Economy
    • M48 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:annpce:v:91:y:2020:i:1:p:151-164. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1370-4788 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.