外文翻译

Who are informal business owners?

Many firms in developing countries are informal, that is they operate without registering with the government. For example, in a labor market survey of Mexico, nearly 50 percent of business owners report that their firm is not registered with the authorities.

Different explanations have been put forth to explain why firms operate informally. One view, associated with De Soto (1989), is that informal business owners are viable entrepreneurs who are being held back from registering their firm due to complex regulations. Another view, expressed for example by Tokman (1992), sees informal business owners as individuals who are trying to make a living while they search for a wage job.

I used to be partial to the De Soto view. However, a few years ago, I wrote a paper on the impact of a business registration reform in Mexico (Bruhn, 2008), expecting that I would find that the reform led informal business owners to register their business. Surprisingly, this is not what I found. The reform had positive effects, creating more registered businesses and employment, but these businesses came from wage earners setting up new businesses, and not from informal business owners registering.

Ever since, this finding has bothered me. Over the following years, new research emerged arguing that informal business owners are heterogeneous and that both the De Soto and Tokman views may be correct, depending on which groups of entrepreneurs are under consideration. In particular, De Mel, McKenzie, and Woodruff (2010) find that 70 percent of self-employed microenterprise owners in Sri Lanka have personal characteristics similar to wage workers, while the other 30 percent have characteristics similar to owners of larger firms. These 30 percent are the ones who might be held back by regulation (as argued by De Soto), while the other 70 percent may be looking for a job (as argued by Tokman). In order to make this classification, De Mel, McKenzie, and Woodruff use discriminant analysis, a tool usually used by biologists to separate animals or plants into species on the basis of easily measured characteristics.

This paper gave me the idea of applying discriminant analysis to the sample of informal business owners I studied in my research on the registration reform in Mexico to help me isolate the business owners that would be most likely to register after the reform. In practice, this works as follows. I first take only individuals who are either wage earners or formal business owners and compare their background characteristics, such as gender, age, marital status, and education. Based on this comparison, I compute a set of weights on the characteristics that allows me to predict whether a person is a wage earner or formal business owner. I then take these weights and apply them to the same background characteristics in the sample of informal business owners. This allows me to separate informal business owners into the ones

who are similar to wage earners and those who are like formal business owners. The results of this analysis are summarized in a new working paper (Bruhn, 2012) and show that about 50 percent of informal business owners in my sample from Mexico fall into each group.

I then examine the effect of the business registration reform on the registration decisions of these two separate groups of informal business owners. It was a relief to me when I found that informal business owners who have characteristics like formal business owner were indeed more likely to register after the reform, consistent with my original expectations about the impact of reform. In contrast, business owners who have characteristics like wage earners became less likely to register after the reform . This explains why my earlier paper did not find an effect on registrations when looking at all informal business owners. The next question then is why are informal business owners with characteristics like wage earners less likely to register after the reform? The answer is that they are more likely to become wage earners instead. My previous paper showed that the reform increased employment, which apparently helped these informal business owners find a job. So, overall, the reform seems to have led to a more efficient allocation of individuals into occupations, providing additional evidence of the benefits of business entry reforms. On top of that, the findings also confirm the argument that informal business owners are a mix of De Soto and Tokman types.

From: http://blogs.worldbank.org/allaboutfinance/who-are-informal-business-owners

谁是非正式企业的业主

因为没有在政府注册，所以许多发展中国家的公司都是非正式的，例如在墨西哥的劳动服务市场，近乎百分之五十的企业主没有自主的登记。

公司这种非正常的运作有着多种解释，一种观点是德索托在1989年所阐述的，非正式企业的业主都是一些务实的企业家，另一种观点是由托可曼(1992)所举例的，认为作为一个个体的非正式企业的业主他们努力在求职过程中生存。 我通常是部分的同意德索托的观点，然而，几年以前，我在墨西哥商业注册改革印象上写了一篇论文，期望我会找到一种改革方式使非正式企业业主对他们的商业进行注册。奇怪的是，这并不是我所发现的。这次改革有积极的影响，创造了许多注册的商业和雇工，但是，这些商业来自于工资的业主所设置的新交易，而并不是来自于非正式企业的注册。

从那时起这一发现一直困扰着我，在接下来的几年，新的研究结论认为非正式业务的业主并不是循规蹈矩，德索托和托可曼的观点可能是正确的，这取决于所考虑的那一个业主群体。特别地说，德梅尔，麦肯齐和伍德拉夫（2010）发现在斯里兰卡百分之七十的自我雇佣微小企业的业主有类似于雇工的个人特点，然而另外百分之三十的企业业主有着和规模较大公司的所有着相同的特性，德索托认为占百分之三十的这么一群人可以忍受住规制，创立企业，而托克曼认为其他百分之七十的人可能会去寻找一份工作。为了做好这一群体的划分，德梅尔，麦肯齐和伍德拉夫运用了判别的工具进行划分分析，这种工具基于对植物和动物容易辨别的特性而经常被生物学家用来对他们的种类进行划分。

这篇论文给了我利用这种辨别工具对一些非正式业务的业主的样本进行分析的想法，这些样本企业是我在墨西哥注册登记改革中的研究的一些企业，这些研究有助于帮助一些业务业主在注册改革之后作登记。实际中，这些工作的程序如下，首先，我把这些个体不管是工人或者是业务业主的背景特性进行比较，例如，性别、年龄、婚姻状况或者受教育程度。基于这些比较，我设置了这些特点的权重，并进行计算，这使我去预测个人是不是雇工或者是一些业务业主，然后我把这些权重应用到同样背景特点的业务业主的样本中。这些使我把非正式业务业主分成不同的类型，一些类型的个体和雇工相似，另一些类型的个体和正式业务的业主相似。这些分析的成果总结在一片新的工作论文上（布鲁恩2012），表明在来自墨西哥的样本中百分之五十的非正式业务的业主分类明显。

然后我检查了这两个相互分离的非正式企业业主团体在商业登记的改革后的登记结论中的效果，当我发现有着和正式业务的业主相同的个性的非正式业务的业主的确更倾向于在改革之后进行注册登记后，对我来说是一种解脱，因为有关改革的影响和我原来预期的是一致的。相比之下，像雇工似的有着个性的业务所有着变得较少的意愿在改革之后进行注册登记，这些解释了为什么早期的论文在注重于所有非正式业务业主时不能发现登记的影响。下一个问题便是为什么像雇工似有着个性特点的非正式业务的业主不太愿意在改革之后进行登记呢？换句话说，他们更喜欢成为雇工，我前些时候的论文表明这次改革增加了就业，这显然有助于这些非正式的企业主找到一份工作。所以，总体来说，这次改革看上去有助于个人更有效的分配到合适的职业，在改革之后使更多的业务融入进去增加

的好处提供了额外的证据，在此基础之上，也证实了正规企业主是融合了德索托和托可曼的类型。

来自:http://blogs.worldbank.org/allaboutfinance/who-are-informal-business-owners

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