The Enterprise Sector : Providing Employment and Sharing Risk

Abstract

This paper highlights the links between enterprises in poor countries, risk, and employment outcomes. Concentrating on how formality and flexibility can be combined to ensure that the effects of risk are mitigated for firms and households, the author details the concepts of formality and its relation to enterprise and labor markets. Flexibility includes a range of skills firms can employ, the number of produce lines they can supply and access to technology that enables them to produce goods of higher quality. The paper further explores the links between formality and flexibility, analyzes enterprises according to locality and size, links enterprises and incomes to discover how risks can be managed, and broadly applies formality and flexibility themes to assess their relation to risk managing policies.