7. L'économie informelle est-elle un frein au développement et à la croissance économiques ?

Informal economy, longly remained unknown, has been recently more studied, thanks to the specification of the concept and the precision of the measurement methods on the one hand and to the policy, social and economic issues that it has recently raised on the other. This article comes back to the definitional issue of the informal economy, the problems of its measure and the way in which the economic theory has apprehended it. Then, the paper presents the main stylized facts on the weight and the role of the informal economy, with a particular focus on its micro and macro dynamics in the short run and the long run. To finish, the author proposes some economic policies likely to bring back informal economy and social and economic development together.