**5. Predominance of the informal economy in global South**

Defining informal economy or informal sector has attracted much research within academic circles. In literature, hence, there is a plethora of definitions and perspectives of informal economy. Many more definitions and re-definitions are still on-going. For this study, however, two definitions are trite: (i) The last general discussions of informal economy by the ILO tripartite constituents in 2002 International Labour Conference… define informal economy to include "all economic activities that are—in law or practice—not covered or insufficiently covered by formal arrangements"; and (ii) Employment in the informal sector was defined by the 15th International Conference of Labour Statisticians as "including all jobs in informal sector enterprises, or all persons who, during a given reference period, were employed in at least one informal sector enterprise, irrespective of their status in employment and whether it was their main or a supplementary job".

Researchers have attempted to delineate the main threads that run in the several definitions. For instance, Kasarda and Grenshaw [27] after synthesizing several works submitted that the conceptualization of informal economy were hinged on four main characteristics namely: (i) size of firm; (ii) source of financial and material resources; (iii) the degree of linkages between regulated and unregulated sectors and (iv) the extent to which firms comply with government regulations. With regards to the main characteristics of enterprises that operate in the informal sector, Becker [28] presented the following characteristics; (a) start-up and conditions are minimal; (b) activity level is normally small with a number of workers; (c) normally, formal education does provide the expertise required for business operations, and (d) goods and services produced require a lot of labour.
