The Hidden Enterprise Culture: Entrepreneurship in the Underground Economy

Front Cover
Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008 M01 1 - 288 pages
This book will be an excellent primer for policy makers wishing to understand the nature and contradictory significance of the underground economy and needing to design suitably subtle policy responses to it. Roger Lee, Growth and Change The Hidden Enterp

From inside the book

Contents

1 Introduction
1
the omission of the underground economy
15
the omission of entrepreneurship
29
4 Estimating the size and growth of underground enterprise
43
5 Portraits of underground enterprise
66
6 Explaining the hidden enterprise culture
92
7 The deterrence option
105
9 The enabling option
128
supplyside initiatives
156
demandside initiatives
166
towards high commitment societies
185
14 Coordinating government thought and action
196
15 Conclusions
213
Bibliography
220
Index
257
Copyright

10 Helping enterprises start up in a legitimate manner
139

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Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 119 - The road to the free market was opened and kept open by an enormous increase in continuous, centrally organized and controlled interventionism.
Page 4 - Source: Sunday Times 30 April 2000 THE BLACK ECONOMY The black economy involves the paid production and sale of goods and services that are unregistered by or hidden from the state for tax, social security and/or labour-law purposes but which are legal in all other aspects.
Page 77 - ... the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity that participants find so substantial and interesting that, in the typical case, they launch themselves on a career centred on acquiring and expressing its special skills, knowledge and experience...
Page 120 - Peru, the problem is not the black market but the state itself. The informal economy is the people's spontaneous and creative response to the state's incapacity to satisfy the basic needs of the impoverished masses.
Page 23 - Indeed it can be persuasively argued that the 'entrepreneurial revolution' to which Thatcherism contributed with such passionate brutality is 'still working its way through the system' (Hall, 1991, p. 10). In Britain attempts to construct a culture of enterprise have proceeded through the progressive enlargement of the territory of the market - of the realm of private enterprise and economic rationality - by a series of redefinitions of its object. Thus the task of creating an 'enterprise culture'...
Page 50 - Committee considered there was " abundant evidence to show that in the sphere in which self-assessment is still requisite there is a substantial amount of fraud and evasion.
Page 222 - An Econometric Method of Estimating the 'Hidden Economy,' United Kingdom (1960-1984): Estimates and Tests.
Page 123 - McLaughlin (1994) concludes that the level of unemployment benefit does have some impact on the duration of individuals' unemployment spells, but the effect is a rather small one. Following Atkinson and Micklewright (1991) and Dilnot (1992), she states that the level of unemployment benefits in the UK could not be said to contribute to an explanation of unemployment to a degree that is useful when considering policy. Moreover, extremely far-reaching cuts would be required in benefit levels to have...
Page 59 - It exists to foster the transition towards open market-oriented economies and to promote private and entrepreneurial initiative in the countries of central and eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) committed to and applying the principles of multiparty democracy, pluralism and market economics.
Page 109 - As long as people can profit by not declaring their work, it will be impossible entirely to eradicate the hidden economy. Therefore, the most effective way of tackling the problem is significantly to improve the likelihood of detecting and penalising offenders. What is needed is a strong environment of deterrence'.

About the author (2008)

Colin Williams is a senior lecturer in economic geography at Leicester University. Williams has written Consumer Services and Economic Development and Examining the Nature of Domestic Labor, and has contributed to the journals International Planning Studies, Local Government Policy Making and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

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