Publication: Does Competition from Informal Firms Hurt Job Creation by Formal Firms? Evidence Using Firm-Level Survey Data
Loading...
Published
2021-01
ISSN
Date
2021-01-21
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The informal sector is an important source of livelihoods and jobs for a vast majority of people in developing countries. However, there is concern that the informal sector may undermine job creation in the formal sector. According to the “parasite” view of informality, informal firms can compete against formal firms, and often "unfairly" so as they do not have to comply with costly regulations and pay taxes. This "unfair" advantage makes it difficult for formal firms to compete against informal firms, implying a significant loss of formal sector jobs. Using firm-level survey data for manufacturing small and medium-size enterprises in 109 mostly developing countries, this study estimates the impact of competition from informal firms on the growth rate of employment among formal sector small and medium-size enterprises. The results show that the growth rate of employment declines significantly as competition from informal firms rises. According to the baseline specification, for each one standard deviation increase in informal competition, the employment growth rate declines by 1 percentage point. Consistent with the parasite view of informality, the negative impact on job growth is much larger when the business environment is less conducive to operating formally versus informally due to factors such high corruption, weak rule of law, more burdensome regulations, and high profit tax rate. Several checks are provided against endogeneity concerns.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Amin, Mohammad. 2021. Does Competition from Informal Firms Hurt Job Creation by Formal Firms? Evidence Using Firm-Level Survey Data. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9515. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35029 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Climate and Social Sustainability in Fragility, Conflict, and Violence Contexts(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)Climate change is widely recognized as a driver of violent conflict, but its broader social effects remain less understood. Ignoring these dimensions risks a vicious cycle where climate policies might undermine socially just adaptation. Evidence is still limited on how climate shocks influence political participation, trust, or migration. This paper helps fill that gap by examining links between climate change, conflict, and social sustainability, with a focus on inclusion, resilience, cohesion, and legitimacy. Using secondary data from 2019–24, the study applies simple correlation-based methods to test three hypotheses on the nature, severity, and composition of these associations. The analysis combines multiple climate impact measures, new conflict classifications, recent social sustainability frameworks, and controls for population and geography. The results reveal strong correlations—not causation—between climate events and contexts of fragility, conflict, and violence. Climate impacts are most pronounced in both national and subnational conflict settings. The study also finds robust links between fragility, conflict, and violence and low levels of social sustainability, reflecting its role as both a driver and consequence of conflict. Some dimensions—such as violent events and insecurity—appear weaker in areas most affected by climate shocks. Two of the hypotheses are supported, and one remains inconclusive.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Institutional Capacity for Policy Implementation: An Analytical Framework(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)State capacity is an important prerequisite for policy implementation, yet at the country level it is difficult to measure, assess, and reform. This paper proposes a focus on institutional capacity: the ability of public institutions to implement the specific policy mandates for which they are responsible. Based on a review of existing literature, the paper defines the different dimensions that compose institutional capacity and groups them into two cross-cutting categories: organizational dimensions (personnel, financial resources, information systems, and management practices) and governance dimensions (transparency, independence, and accountability). The paper proposes measures for organizational and governance dimensions using existing data, shows intra-institutional variation of these measures within countries, and discusses how new data could be collected for better measurement of these concepts. Finally, the paper illustrates how the framework can be used to diagnose the sources of common problems related to weak policy implementation.Publication South Africa’s Fragmented Cities: The Unequal Burden of Labor Market Frictions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-08)Using high-resolution administrative, census, and satellite data, this paper shows that South African cities are characterized by spatial mismatches between where people live and where jobs are located, relative to 20 global peers. Areas within 5 kilometers of commercial centers have 9,300 fewer residents per square kilometer than expected, which is 60 percent below the global median. Poor, dense neighborhoods are most affected. In Johannesburg, a 10-percentile increase in distance from the nearest business hub corresponds to a 3.7-percentile drop in asset wealth (a proxy of household wellbeing) and 4.9-percentile drop in employment. In Cape Town, the declines are 4.0 and 3.7 percentiles, respectively. Employment is 87 percent lower in the poorest decile than the richest in Johannesburg and 61 percent lower in Cape Town. These findings suggest that South Africa’s spatial organization of people and economic activity constrains agglomeration and reinforces inequality. This methodology provides a scalable and standardized data-driven framework to analyze spatial accessibility and agglomeration frictions in complex, data-constrained urban systems.Publication Investment in Emerging and Developing Economies(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)The world faces a pressing challenge to meet key development objectives amid slowing growth and rising macroeconomic and geopolitical risks. With the number of job seekers rising rapidly, infrastructure shortfalls continuing to be large, and climate costs mounting, the case for a significant investment push has never been stronger. Yet the capacity to respond in many emerging markets and developing economies has eroded. Since the global financial crisis, investment growth has slowed to about half its pace in the 2000s, with both public and private investment weakening. Foreign direct investment inflows—a critical source of capital, technology, and managerial know-how—have also fallen sharply and become increasingly concentrated, leaving low-income countries with only a marginal share. The risks of further retrenchment are significant, as trade tensions, policy uncertainty, and elevated debt levels continue to weigh on investment. Reigniting momentum will require ambitious domestic reforms to strengthen institutions, rebuild macro-fiscal stability, and deepen trade and investment integration—the foundations of a supportive business climate. At the same time, international cooperation is indispensable. A renewed commitment to a predictable system of cross-border trade and investment flows, combined with scaled-up financial support and sustained technical assistance, is essential to help emerging markets and developing economies—especially low-income countries and economies in fragile and conflict situations—bridge financing gaps and implement the domestic reforms needed to restore investment as an engine of growth, jobs, and development.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Does Competition from Informal Firms Impact R&D by Formal SMEs? Evidence Using Firm-Level Survey Data(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11)The informal sector is an important source of livelihoods and jobs for a vast majority of people in developing countries. However, there is concern that it may undermine growth and development of the formal sector. For instance, the growth literature indicates that research and development activity and innovation are a key driver of long-term growth. How does the competition that formal sector firms face from informal sector firms affect research and development activity by the formal firms The present paper attempts to answer this question using firm-level survey data for small and medium-size enterprises in a large cross-section of mostly developing countries. The results show that higher informal competition leads to greater a likelihood of spending on research and development by formal firms. For the most conservative baseline specification, a one standard deviation increase in informal competition leads to an increase of 5.2 percentage points in the likelihood of spending on research and development by formal firms. This is a large increase given that less than 18 percent of the firms in the sample engage in research and development activity. Further, consistent with the “parasite” view of informality, the positive impact of informal competition on research and development activity is magnified when the business environment is less conducive to operating in the formal sector compared with informal sector due to factors such as higher corruption, weaker rule of law, more burdensome business regulations, and a higher tax rate on profits. As expected, there is no impact of informal competition on research and development activity among large firms. The main findings are robust to several controls, alternative specifications, and endogeneity checks.Publication Informality among Formal Firms : Firm-level, Cross-country Evidence on tax Compliance and Access to Credit(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-01-01)The authors use firm-level, cross-county data from Investment Climate surveys in 49 developing countries to investigate an important channel through which informality can affect productivity: access to credit and external finance. Informality is measured as self-reported lack of tax compliance in a sample of registered firms that also answered questions on a large set of other characteristics. The authors find that more tax compliance is significantly associated with more access to credit both in OLS and in country fixed effects estimates. In particular, the link between credit and formality is stronger in high-formality countries. This suggests that firms' balance sheets are relatively more informative for financial institutions in environments where signal extraction is a less noisy process. The authors' results are robust to the inclusion of a wide array of correlates and to two-stage estimation.Publication Stylized Facts on Productivity Growth : Evidence from Firm-level Data in Croatia(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-07)Drawing on a representative sample of firms, this paper presents some microeconomic evidence on the productivity growth process in Croatia since the onset of recession (2008-12). Four types of results are highlighted. First, there is a persistent (and increasing) heterogeneity in the performance of Croatian firms along outcome measures. Second, Croatia lags behind regional peers in entrepreneurship measures, which suggests a comparatively lower economic dynamism. Third, the lack of dynamism displayed by the Croatian economy is confirmed when looking at the firm entry and exit process: the analytical results point to reduced firm dynamism compared with Croatia's peers in Europe and Central Asia. Fourth, the contribution of net entry to overall productivity growth in Croatia is surprisingly negative. This is contrary to what would be expected based on the literature and suggests that the process of "destructive creation" in Croatia has not been efficient, as the market might be eliminating firms that are potentially productive. Policies that foster market contestability should be pursued, especially policies aiming at better product market regulation (such as liberalization of entry into the service sector, particularly retail and infrastructure). Measures to help finance entrepreneurship (in promising sectors) should be used to support enhancements in firm productivity. In addition, appropriate bankruptcy rules play a key role by easing the exit process and allowing low-productive units to leave the market and free resources that can be better used by other, more efficient, firms.Publication Does Better Access to Finance Help Firms Deal with the COVID-19 Pandemic? Evidence from Firm-Level Survey Data(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06)The advent of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a severe liquidity crunch among private firms. Yet, formal analysis of the impact of a liquidity crunch or access to finance on the performance of firms during the pandemic is limited. The present paper estimates the impact of access to finance in the period before the pandemic on the likelihood of a decline in sales of the firm during the pandemic. The results show a strong connection between the two. That is, firms with better access to finance are significantly less likely to experience a decline in sales, and this relationship is highly heterogenous. First, better access to finance reduces the likelihood of a decline in sales much more for firms that have a stronger long-standing relationship with important stakeholders such as skilled workers and input suppliers. These are firms that use more skilled relative to unskilled workers, firms in industries with a more complex network of input suppliers, and firms in countries where the cost of enforcing contracts with new input suppliers is high. Second, the impact of access to finance is less among firms that use more women relative to men workers. This is especially so in countries or societies that accord a higher value to women’s caregiving role than to their work outside the home. The paper argues that both of these heterogeneities are along expected lines and derive from the specific ways in which access to finance benefits firms in fighting the pandemic. Thus, they help to raise confidence against endogeneity concerns about the main results.Publication Coagglomeration of Formal and Informal Industry : Evidence from India(World Bank, Washington DC, 2013-09-26)A large and growing informal sector is a major feature of developing countries. This paper analyzes coagglomeration patterns between formal and informal manufacturing enterprises in India. It studies (a) the causes underlying these patterns and (b) the positive externalities, if any, on the entry of new firms. The analysis finds that buyer-supplier and technology linkages explain much of formal-informal coagglomeration. Also, within-industry coagglomeration matters mostly to small- and medium-sized formal firm births. Traditional measures of agglomeration remain important in explaining new industrial activity, whether in the formal or the informal sector.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Corruption, Regulatory Burden and Firm Productivity(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06)Using firm-level data from more than 39,000 firms in 111 economies, this paper tests the hypothesis that corruption impedes productivity more at higher levels of regulation. The analysis finds that there is a significant negative relationship between corruption and firm productivity when regulation is high and an insignificant relationship when it is low. These findings are robust to different controls and specifications.Publication World Development Report 2022(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-15)World Development Report 2022: Finance for an Equitable Recovery examines the central role of finance in the economic recovery from COVID-19. Based on an in-depth look at the consequences of the crisis most likely to affect low- and middle-income economies, it advocates a set of policies and measures to mitigate the interconnected economic risks stemming from the pandemic—risks that may become more acute as stimulus measures are withdrawn at both the domestic and global levels. Those policies include the efficient and transparent management of nonperforming loans to mitigate threats to financial stability, insolvency reforms to allow for the orderly reduction of unsustainable debts, innovations in risk management and lending models to ensure continued access to credit for households and businesses, and improvements in sovereign debt management to preserve the ability of governments to support an equitable recovery.Publication World Development Report 2020(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020)Global value chains (GVCs) powered the surge of international trade after 1990 and now account for almost half of all trade. This shift enabled an unprecedented economic convergence: poor countries grew rapidly and began to catch up with richer countries. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, however, the growth of trade has been sluggish and the expansion of GVCs has stalled. Meanwhile, serious threats have emerged to the model of trade-led growth. New technologies could draw production closer to the consumer and reduce the demand for labor. And conflicts among large countries could lead to a retrenchment or a segmentation of GVCs. This book examines whether there is still a path to development through GVCs and trade. It concludes that technological change is, at this stage, more a boon than a curse. GVCs can continue to boost growth, create better jobs, and reduce poverty provided that developing countries implement deeper reforms to promote GVC participation; industrial countries pursue open, predictable policies; and all countries revive multilateral cooperation.Publication Electricity Auctions : An Overview of Efficient Practices(World Bank, 2011-07-25)This report assesses the potential of electricity contract auctions as a procurement option for the World Bank's client countries. It focuses on the role of auctions of electricity contracts designed to expand and retain existing generation capacity. It is not meant to be a 'how-to' manual. Rather, it highlights some major issues and options that need to be taken into account when a country considers moving towards competitive electricity procurement through the introduction of electricity auctions. Auctions have played an important role in the effort to match supply and demand. Ever since the 1990s, the use of long-term contract auctions to procure new generation capacity, notably from private sector suppliers, has garnered increased affection from investors, governments, and multilateral agencies in general, as a means to achieve a competitive and transparent procurement process while providing certainty of supply for the medium to long term. However, the liberalization of electricity markets and the move from single-buyer procurement models increased the nature of the challenge facing system planners in their efforts to ensure an adequate and secure supply of electricity in the future at the best price. While auctions as general propositions are a means to match supply with demand in a cost-effective manner, they can also be and have been used to meet a variety of goals.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.