Informal sector

This paper is concerned with the saddle-path stability of monetary growth rules in a two-country two-sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. Alongside standard features of emerging economies, such as a combination of producer and local currency pricing for exports, fiscal dominance and oil exports, this model also incorporates informal labour and production sectors and examines how these features matter in the context of monetary policy in emerging economies. We estimate the model on Iran and US data for home and foreign block respectively using Bayesian estimation techniques. Under a benchmark instruments of monetary policy, we show that a Taylor-type money growth rule rather than interest rate, even up to a four period ahead forward-looking has complete stability and determinacy properties in the economy which is also hold regardless of the level of asset market participation, therefore the inverted Taylor principles does not apply in our economy. Our findings confirm the important propagation channels which are active in the emerging economies and taking into account these features is essential for any policy-related study, such as the stabilizer effect of terms of trade between formal and informal sector, buffer behaviour of informal sector which is dampened in the model of higher informal frictions, disturbance effects of credit constrained household on the business cycle fluctuations and finally, monetary policy shock which is less effective in an environment of high share of informal sector, low informal frictions, high share of limited asset market participations and a trade autarky economy.

In light of recent price swings in oil and the need to reduce the country's dependency on the commodity, the government of Nigeria has implemented a number of reforms and initiatives to stimulate the non-oil sector of the economy, most notably the informal sector. Government financial support as interventions would have otherwise been a relief in changing the narrative of ugly financial accessibility of participants in the informal sector. The level of financial accessibility and its relationship to the economic performance of participants in the informal sector have been largely understudied. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to assess the shortcomings of current government interventions in the informal sector and to provide a viable financial intervention structure to address these issues. This research included both primary and secondary sources of information. Questionnaires were used to collect primary data from respondents. A total of 700 informal sector participant who are mainly SMEs operators, 300 registered and 400 unregistered, were chosen using a purposeful selection technique from the six states of Southwest Nigeria. Data was examined in two ways using SPSS: descriptive and inferential. Thus, the study showed the flaws of the past interventions, such as a faulty programme design, bias in the distribution of financing facilities, a lack of knowledge about the facilities, and convoluted procedures for gaining government funding support.