The Role of Informal Economies in the Post-Soviet World

5    The role of the informal in the formal sphere

Introduction

In a full-blown formal market economy, most goods and services would be produced, sold and distributed in the formal marketplace. This would mean that the vast majority of people would be in formal jobs since, to earn money to purchase the goods and services they need, they would have to earn money in the formal economy to purchase them. In this chapter, therefore, we first evaluate employment participation rates in post-Soviet/socialist economies to show the share of the population engaged in formal employment. This will reveal not only the small proportion of the population that directly participates in the formal market economy, but also how there are increasingly blurred edges ...