Does Women's Political Empowerment Impact the Informal Sector?
Résumé
This paper investigates the impact of women's political empowerment (WPE) on the size of the informal sector using a large panel from 103 emerging and developing countries over the period 1996-2015. Using a fixed-effects model, we find that an increase in women's political empowerment is associated with a reduction in the size of the informal sector. The paper also discusses the diffrent channels through which women's political empowerment may affect informal economic activities, namely institutions and human capital. Our results hold even when including a set of additional control variables and using altervative informality and women's political empowerment measures. We also obtain consistent results using an alternative estimator.