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Informality and poverty in Africa: Which comes first?
(Wiley, 2023) Bolarinwa, Segun Thompson; Simatele, Municinga
Existing empirical work has investigated the relationship between informality and poverty. However, most of this work has neglected the feedback effect. This empirical paper explores the bi-directional causality between poverty and informality within the SGMM-PVAR framework among 40 selected high-income and low-income Sub-Saharan countries between 1991 and 2018. Our results support the heterogeneity argument, suggesting that sub-Saharan African informality is demand and supplyled. The income level of the country mediates the direction of effect. Bi-direction causality is observed for low-income countries. Causality in middle-income countries runs from poverty to informality. The results suggest that a certain level of informality may be desirable, especially in low-income countries.